


Unexpected

by CrackingLamb



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canon Divergent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Non-Canon Compliant Sole Survivor, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Plot Twists, some naughty language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-01-18 09:09:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12385161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrackingLamb/pseuds/CrackingLamb
Summary: The SS arrives at Fort Hagen, but things do not go as expected.





	1. Chapter 1

Fort Hagen.

The destination she’d worked so hard to reach. She’d fought off raiders, super mutants and creatures she had no name for to get here. She’d chosen to help the Minutemen and the Railroad to get here. She’d sacrificed so many things to get here. She’d pretended to be something she was not. But along the way she’d found some things too. Not all those things she’d become were a lie. And at least her dog loved her.

The front entrance was blocked, so she had to find another way in. But she was determined to find this man. _Kellogg_. Knowing his name did things to her. Knowing his name gave the face in her memories heft and substance. Made him real. Valentine had helped her track him down with Dogmeat – really, who called a pet Dogmeat? – and had wanted to come with her, but this was something she needed to do alone. Kellogg had entered her life alone, she should enter his alone. It was fitting and fair, right? She’d sent both Valentine and her dog home, whatever that word meant now. It was someone’s home, not necessarily hers.

The fighting was tough. Gen-1 synths poured out of hallways and rooms like ants pouring out of a kicked anthill. She was shot by their energy weapons in four places before she found the right hallway, the right room. She couldn’t let the pain distract her. She had just one thing she needed to do. Just one.

“Okay, you made it,” his voice growled over the PA. “I’m just up ahead. I’m telling my synths to stand down. Let’s talk.”

“Yes, let’s,” she said softly. She didn’t think he could hear her. She’d tried to speak to him before, but it seemed that while he could follow her progress, she couldn’t tell him the reason she was there.

She opened the doors and there he was, hands up in a gesture of neutrality. She wasn’t fooled into thinking it was peace. Kellogg. The end product of her journey. It had almost been too easy.

“There she is, the most resilient woman in the Commonwealth.”

She went up to him, studied his face, the scar that ran down his cheek. The eyes that always found hers in her dreams. The leather of his jacket squeaked in the sudden silence. Her side ached where she’d been hit. Her leg was already going numb and her arm…well her arm was just about useless, burn marks in both upper and lower parts of her sleeve.

“You came a long way. So, let’s hear it.”

“Thank you,” she said, her breath gasping and coming short in her lungs. He was surprised. He must have been expecting something else entirely. She smiled, hesitant and maybe even unsure of herself. But this was why she came, why she fought through everything. To find him and say these words. Her hesitation dissipated. She stretched and placed a hand on his cheek. He nearly backed away, but there was a bank of computers behind him and he had nowhere to go. “I’m not here to kill you. You saved me. You set me free.”

“What?”

“You saved me.”

“I killed your husband, took your child. I assumed you would be a bit…angry.”

She smiled again. “Nathan was many things, a good little American soldier, a monster. But he was not my husband. And that child was not mine. Funny how pre-war records can fall short of the truth. I am not Nora. She left three weeks before the bombs dropped. But they were already signed up for the Vault, and he didn’t have time to change anything.”

“So, you’re…who, exactly?”

“My name in Tien Xu. Xu. Nathan brought me back with him from Alaska. He’d been…using me. I was a prisoner of war. He beat Nora within an inch of her life when she wouldn’t just roll over and accept me. The one time in her life she stood up to him. And then she was gone. I don’t know what he was thinking would happen, but then again, I don’t think he cared. Like I said, he was a monster.”

“So am I, sweetheart,” Kellogg warned.

“Not to me.” She tucked a hand to her side, feeling the burns and the seeping blood. “Look. If you wanna finish the job, that’s fine. This world sucks and I’m hurtin’ here. There’s no way I could kill you even if I wanted to. But it needed to be said. Thank you for murdering that asshole.” Her sight went dark as the last bit of her energy slipped away and she fell on the floor.

***

Xu opened her eyes and found she was still in Fort Hagan. She recognized this room. She’d passed through it before finding Kellogg. She was laid out on the big bed, the one she supposed was his. Her side still ached and her leg burned and her arm was numb, but she was alive. And apparently he’d cleaned her up.

“You didn’t kill me?” she asked into the room, wondering if he was still there.

“I’m not completely heartless.”

“I thought you were supposed to be.” She turned her head and saw him leaning against the far wall of the room, near the still open double doors. It was quiet in that other room. “The synths?”

“I didn’t need them anymore. I sent them back.”

“Back?”

“To the Institute. That would have been the end goal here, for you to find that out. Well for the mother to find out. So…you’re Chinese?”

“Yes.” She tried to sit up and in doing so discovered that she was mostly naked. Well, then he’d seen the marks, the brands. She didn’t care. Personal modesty was a luxury she hadn’t had in so long she didn’t know if she missed it or not. Her wounds were bandaged, she saw. Her pain was present but less. _Stimpaks, Med-X_ , her brain supplied. _All that healing in a simple injection._ Her weapon was out of reach, but it didn’t matter. She’d already said what she came to say. And oddly enough, she didn’t think he was going to hurt her. “I was captured by the 108th in Anchorage, transported as a prisoner of war and ‘given’ to staff sergeant Nathan Jones.”

“Were you a soldier?”

“Yes.”

“Explains why you made it this far. What am I supposed to do with you now?”

“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes and breathed. _Patience is its own reward_. She heard him move away from the wall, cross the room and go into the adjoining one. When he came back he sat on the edge of the bed.

“Here.” She opened her eyes and saw he was holding out a glass of water. It looked clean. She sipped it slowly. Cleaner than anything she’d managed to run through a purifier. Clearly this Institute still had access to technology that had been lost everywhere else.

“Thanks,” she murmured. “So now what?”

“I could let you go, I guess. Not usually my style, to leave a job undone. But then again, you weren’t the job.”

“No?”

“No. The Institute may hold my walking papers, but they don’t own me. I still make my own decisions.” There was a lie in there, but she didn’t feel like chasing it. He was willing to let her go? She was fine with that.

“Where are you from, Kellogg? You don’t sound Bostonian.”

“California. You know where that is?”

“I do, in fact. There was a processing center in San Francisco. I spent a month there before coming here.” She drank her water and eased herself backwards on the bed until she could rest her head against the board. Kellogg got up again and rifled through a dresser, coming up with a shirt that he casually tossed to her. She managed to get herself in it, although it was so big the sleeves fell loosely over her hands. He snorted, almost with amusement, and took her hands one at a time to roll up the cuffs. He was strangely gentle about it, conscious of her wounded arm. His fingers lingered on the pulse of her wrist for a second before he let her go.

“You smiled at me in the Vault, do you remember that?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Should have given you a clue.”

“Yeah, probably.” He sat back at the edge of the bed and he didn’t touch her again. She drank her water in silence. After a few minutes he swiveled so he could look at her. “I saw the brand on your shoulder.”

“Figured as much.”

“I didn’t know the US kept slaves after the war. Never would have pegged the old institution as being slavers.”

“I hear slavers haven’t improved in two centuries either. And history is written by the victor, didn’t anyone tell you that?”

“Not sure there was a victor to write any histories.” He sighed, and when his face relaxed he looked younger. “What do you want to do?”

“Me? I want to wake up and find that this was all a horrible nightmare. I want to go home. My home.” She smiled ruefully. “It’s not gonna happen though, is it?”

“Your English is good.”

“Should be, I studied for three years straight. I was a black ops infiltrator. A spy,” she added when he looked confused. “You might even say ninja if you wanted to be pedestrian. This country was already going downhill and determined to take the world with it when we took Alaska. We needed to gather as much information as we could before we could make a decision. But we had no defense against power armor and mini nukes, so we lost ground. And the decision was made for us. Better to burn than to surrender. Future generations were supposed to thank us for destroying the evil of the US.” She smirked and made a sound like disparagement. “We had no idea what we were doing.”

He looked around the room, pristine considering the condition of the rest of the place. He’d been there long enough to clean it up, make it a secure bolthole. But she knew he was seeing the rest of the country in his mind’s eye. He was from the west coast; he’d traversed the breadth of the ruined nation. So had she, but she’d gotten a different view.

“Again, explains why you survived so well out here.”

“I was trained to survive anything. Even torture and slavery, apparently.” Her eyes shifted away from him. Some memories didn’t deserve recognition, although when she was helplessly in their grip in her nightmares they didn’t care. “Tell me about the Institute,” she said, changing the subject.

“There’s not much to tell. I work for them. They have…that kid I took is there. He’s the leader now. An old man.” Kellogg chuckled. “It was supposed to be a shock to the mother, to find she’d come so far only to lose out again. It was supposed to make her give up.”

“She would have. She was a mousy little thing, terrified of her own shadow. Of course, living with a man like Nathan would do that to anyone, I guess. I actually felt sorry for her. No one should have to live like that. Sometimes I wonder if she died in the bombs or made it to another Vault. I hope she did. Only thing the end of the world did was give survivors a chance to remake themselves.”

“Pity you got caught up in this.” It sounded genuine. She’d heard of his reputation as a cold blooded killer, but she also knew that the job often meant maintaining a façade. Like he said, he wasn’t totally heartless. Just mostly.

“I’m still alive, that’s what counts, right?” But she was sneering, derisive. Kellogg cracked a smile.

“I like you, Xu.”

“Well doesn’t that make my day?” He laughed, rusty and disused. It changed his whole face, made his bleak demeanor disappear behind something almost human. She was good at reading people; it’s what kept her alive so long. Something in her relaxed. He wasn’t going to hurt her.

“I think we’re done here,” he said.

“You leaving?”

“Yeah. I have my orders. Father doesn’t like having his errand boys sit on their asses chatting with cute Chinese assassins.”

“He calls himself Father? God complex?” She ignored his comment on her looks. She ruthlessly used her looks to her advantage, but Kellogg wasn’t someone to use. An alliance with him wouldn’t get her anything useful in that regard and she didn’t think he could be easily tempted anyway. He was a killing tool, nothing more. His façade went deep, had become part of his soul. Still, it touched something that had been cold and hard inside her. He’d said it in a way that made her physical appearance seem an afterthought. Like it had no bearing on her worth. She appreciated that, could respect it even.

“Something like that. Those Gen-3 synths you probably have heard of? Based on his DNA.”

“That’s why you took him, isn’t it? Pure sample, untouched by the nuclear war.”

“You’re a smart girl, Xu.”

“Thanks.” She rolled the knowledge over in her mind. Were they clones or something else? No two she’d met were ever the same, and many didn’t even know what they were. How long had this been going on? “Wait, you said he was an old man. You took him from that Vault. How old are you?”

“A hundred and nine.”

“Lookin’ good for your age, if I may say so.”

“Cybernetics.” His eyes twinkled with appreciation for her offhand compliment. Maybe he wasn’t as immune to flattery as she’d thought.

“Thought that was a lost art.” She flexed her good arm, the one he probably had noticed. He saw her fingers clench and open and almost smiled. Yeah, he’d noticed. The actuators were good, a nearly perfect mimicry of human joints and flexibility, but there was no denying that her left arm was synthetic.

“You too, huh?”

“How much?”

“What?"

“How much is you and how much is machine?”

“Oh. I’m mostly me. I have some enhanced neural interfaces, some pain inhibitors. The parts are all mine, the wiring isn’t.”

“Interesting. Mine is a little more…in depth.”

“So I gathered.” He stood up, crossed the room to pick up her pistol. “Here. You should take this with you. It’s a nice gun, Xu. Wouldn’t want you to lose it.”

“Thanks. Where will you go from here?” She held her gun in her hand, looking it over. She had nowhere to put it since she didn’t have her gear, but she saw it in a pile over near where he had been leaning. Handing her the gun had been something like a peace offering. A way to let her know he wasn’t going to kill her. She appreciated that. His mind worked like hers. It was actually sort of nice to find someone else who thought like she did. She’d missed it. These wastelanders couldn’t calculate their way out of a wet paper bag with a map. They were pathetically easy to manipulate.

“The Glowing Sea.”

“What’s that?”

“Ground zero. An irradiated hellhole, but I go where they send me.”

“Want some company?” She wasn’t even sure where the notion came from, but once she said it, she knew she would be happy to travel with him. Having someone to watch your back was a rarity out here in the Commonwealth. Sure, there were any number of people willing to go with you, but none of them knew her. None of them worked like she did. She didn’t trust them not to get shot and then she’d end up doing all the work anyway. She didn’t trust Kellogg either, but he seemed far less likely to die on her at the first chance he got. And she didn’t think she could manipulate him as easily as anyone else she’d met. It would be an entertaining challenge if nothing else.

His eyes shot to hers and for a moment it looked like he was going to say yes. But they shuttered. “That’s not my call.”

“You hate them, don’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“I can see it in your eyes. Flat, emotionless on the surface. You’ve gotten pretty good at hiding your thoughts. But you’ve let it slip a couple times here. I don’t think you were always a monster, Kellogg. I think they’ve made you into one.”

“Call me Conrad.” Interesting, she mused. He was desperate to have someone know his name. She’d pegged him good. He wasn’t truly a monster, he’d just given up hope of being able to allow what little spark he had left to thrive. Against her better judgement, she found she wanted to help him with that. If she could do it, anyone could, right?

“Conrad. What do you want?”

“I don’t know anymore.” He sighed heavily and hitched his hip against a table. The length of the room was between them, but she couldn’t remember being closer to a single person since she’d woken up. He was tempting, and there were no rules anymore. She had a feeling in her gut that they needed one another. She got up from the bed, her legs shaky under her but still they held her up.

“You have the means, Conrad Kellogg. Why haven’t you destroyed it all?” She placed her hand on his chest, over his heart. He didn’t stop her. He struck her as being a lonely man. One who had been so alone for so long he didn’t even know it anymore. Over a hundred years. It was unimaginable.

“No reason to. They pay the bills, upgrade my parts. And I have nowhere else to go. I’ve run out of road.”

“Gen-3 synths, mock humans with no compunction about killing everything in their path, or escaping because they're slaves in more ways than I ever was. I’ve run across them,” she acknowledged when he eyed her. “What’s their deal anyway? The Institute planning to take over the world or something?”

“Or something,” he conceded.

“This world is shit, but it’s makin’ it. You and I, we’ve seen war. We’ve seen what’s happened here. You’ve seen more of it than anyone else alive. You ever think about that?”

“I try not to.”

“You should burn it down, Conrad. You’re probably the only one who can.”

“I doubt that.” He leaned away from her touch and stood up. He towered over her; she hadn’t realized it before. “I think _you_ could.”

“Do you want me to?” She’d asked purely out of curiosity, but he was mulling it over. She could see the wheels turning. A man like him, he’d had to anything to survive, and probably longer than he’d wanted, than he’d planned. A man like him would be unpredictable at best, but she still saw when he made a decision. The world deserved a chance to make it on its own or not at all. Places like the Institute, with their purity and notions of what made man tick, they didn’t fit in it anymore. Places like the Institute were what started this whole mess in the first place. Given half a chance, they would destroy it anew. _History loves to repeat itself_ , she thought.

“I think I might.”

“You wanna help?”

“Maybe.” His smile was genuine this time. To another person it might have seemed dark, foreboding. To Xu, it was conspiratorial. She could work with that. She could get to like that.

"You gonna turn me in to them for a fat bounty?" she countered to all his vacillating.

"That's the gamble, isn't it?"

He was right.  It was a gamble.  But Xu prided herself on being a good judge, of reading a person well and knowing how to dissect their thought process.  It was what she had trained to do. It hadn't failed her yet.  Kellogg wanted to destroy the Institute every bit as much as she thought.  He woudn't turn her in and risk losing this chance.  At least, she hoped not.  It would put a damper on what could be a rewarding partnership.

“So, where do we start?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kellogg gets an eyeful.

Xu was in a strange position when Kellogg opened his eyes. He’d decided to sack out on the sofa since the Chinese woman needed sleep before they decided what they were going to do. He could have made her share – it was his bed after all – but he figured it wasn’t worth the hassle. He crossed his wrists under his head and watched her fold herself like the sort of pretzel he vaguely remembered from his youth, her balance poised and sure. A light sheen of sweat coated her skin. All of it.

“Zǎoshang hǎo, Kellogg,” she said without missing a beat. She flowed from one position to the next, now standing, now braced on her hands, her feet folded up to touch the back of her own head, now supine on her back, now bent backwards like a bridge, her black hair just brushing the floor. All totally nude. He could see the muscles shift and move under her skin, under the lash marks and the brands on her shoulder and collarbone. She wasn’t even out of breath, each motion slow and precise, smooth and measured.

“What are you doing?” he asked from the sofa.

“Yoga.”

“Come again?” She balanced on her hands, arms straight, legs held off the floor and stretched out to either side, toes pointed. Facing him, totally exposed. She lifted her head and looked him squarely in the eye and _dared_ him to look anywhere other than her face.

“This is an ancient form of muscle stretching and strengthening. I learned these techniques at my father’s knee. They served me well in the army, and serve me well now. How do you think I managed to plow through this place yesterday with no armor?”

It hadn’t even occurred to him when he’d stripped her to check her wounds. She wore fitted leather pants and jacket and not much else. Combat boots, utility belt carrying just her pistol and a knife. She hadn’t even carried any food or water with her. No medical supplies or chems. She’d waltzed right into his bolt hole and torn it to shit with practically her bare hands and zero backup.

 _She hadn’t expected to survive_ , he thought darkly. _Or she was absolutely sure she would_.

 _She’s deadlier than I am. The Institute is so fucked_. The thought pleased him more than he cared to admit.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Soon.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’d like to finish this, if you’re done interrogating me.” She sounded grumpy, but her face was serene. He levered himself off the sofa and wandered into the other room where he kept his supplies.

Breakfast was going to be slim pickings, he noticed. There was an unopened box of Sugar Bombs but he hated that sugary shit. There was Cram or Salisbury Steak. And beer. There was beer. He almost chuckled. He hadn’t been expecting to be a host to such an unusual guest. Or any guest, for that matter. He shrugged, there was nothing for it. He grabbed a Cram and peeled back the top. While he was at it he cracked open a beer and pulled a cigar from the half empty box on the table and lit it. A few quick slices and the Cram was ready to be cooked.

“Your diet is abominable,” Xu said from behind him. Right behind him. He almost jumped. Almost. She had been completely silent.

“Best I can do.” He watched her glide to the counter where she could watch him flipping the nondescript meat in a pan. He glanced over at her and frowned. “Put your clothes on.”

“Am I distracting you?” she asked. There was an almost teasing quality to her voice. Another man, in an another age would have answered in kind, but he wasn’t that man anymore.

“You’ll get grease spatters. They’ll burn.”

She scoffed. “I’ve had worse.”

He had nothing to say to that. He was ruthless, yes, he was cold blooded, yes. He did not torture his victims. Unless it was part of the job. And he hadn’t done a job like that in long enough to no longer remember how it felt other than distaste for the mess. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her turn and survey the assortment of things on the counter. He saw a smirk cross her lips when she saw the cereal.

“I don’t eat those.”

“Too much sugar,” she agreed. She crossed her arms, pushing her breasts up and out like a pin up girl, except that no pin up girl ever had that coldness in their eyes. She was surprisingly curvy for such a petite thing. Not overblown, just…curvy. Not that he’d noticed or anything.

“You want a beer?”

“For breakfast?” She tutted. “Abominable,” she repeated, stressing each syllable. He almost laughed. He gave in to a single bark of it when she grabbed his and took a swig. “Blech.”

“Yeah, well, the Commonwealth isn’t known for its variety.”

“I prefer whiskey.”

“For breakfast?” he said, hearing his own teasing tone and immediately frowned. It had just come out, unplanned. He concentrated on the Cram, browning each slice until it was no longer an indecipherable animal product and looked something like bacon. He remembered bacon. Hell, he remembered pigs.

“You got a shower around here somewhere?”

“Yeah. I even have soap.”

“The lap of luxury,” she sneered with a lilt. He wanted to throw another joke over his shoulder but stopped himself. It was entirely too cozy in his kitchen all of a sudden.

“Eat something first,” he said instead, sliding half of the slices onto a battered plate and dropping it unceremoniously on the table. He plated his own and sat down. The kitchen was filled with cigar smoke and the scent of the fried Cram.

“Fine,” she said sourly, gracefully sliding into a chair across from him. She eyed the Cram dubiously, but ate it. She took small bites, silent and nearly motionless except for her eyes. They crawled over the room, over him.

“What?” he grunted. It was getting harder not to look at her when she was right there, completely unselfconscious about eating at his table naked.

“How long have you been here? When I tracked you to that place in Diamond City I couldn’t tell how long you’d been gone.”

“I’ve been here about three weeks.”

“Hmm.” She swallowed her mouthful and spoke. “You need to go grocery shopping.”

Without a thought he snorted. “Have you been to the local Super Duper Mart lately? Not much of a selection unless you like to eat ferals.”

_Shit, where had that come from?_

She was smiling quietly. He had yet to hear her laugh. She’d managed to make him do it twice. He tipped back his beer and used it an excuse to look at her. Her black hair fell straight around her face, but didn’t reach her shoulders. Her features were small and even, high cheekbones, black eyes, pert nose. Another man in another life would have called her beautiful, but he wasn’t that man. She finished her food and stood to put her plate in the sink, as if they’d shared breakfast a hundred times on a Sunday morning. With her back turned he could see the brand on her shoulder clearly. It was two interlocked circles with a small insignia underneath it, the scarring making it impossible to read now. The one on her collarbone looked to be more…homemade. Like with an iron. Her back was crisscrossed with lash marks. He could clearly see the line of demarcation where her prosthetic arm ended, just above the elbow.

“How’d you get that arm?” he asked, almost without thinking about it.

“Got mangled in a tree from a bad jump. Smashed the bones from elbow to wrist and severed the artery in the forearm.”

“ _In_ a tree?”

“I was jumping from an airplane.”

“Jesus.”

“Yes, we really did jump from airplanes then, Kellogg.”

“I didn’t…” He meant to sound uncaring and nonchalant but the look in her eyes said she didn’t buy it for a second.

“It was all over your face.” She leaned against the counter, her arms crossed again. This time he looked. Blatant and obvious. Her nipples were dark pink, on skin so pale it was translucent. He could see the blue of her veins across her breasts. As he stared, the nipples hardened perceptively. He let his eyes travel back up her face, leisurely, no hurry. Suddenly she grinned. “Not bad, Kellogg.”

“What?”

“You’re not flushed, and I’d bet you’re not even that hard. Made of sterner stuff, eh?”

“You still want that shower? Cuz I need one too. Your options are do it now or share it.”

“Will you scrub my back?”

“Will you scrub mine?”

“If you want.” She pushed away from the counter and started out of the kitchen. “Hopefully the water isn’t too cold. Wouldn’t want to see you at less than your best.”

 _Damn, she’d gotten the last word again_.

 _I think I might actually be outmatched_.

***

He grabbed his soap and two towels and led the way. The bathroom was locker room style, with benches and lockers and high tiled showers spaced apart by shallow rims. Most of them were broken, tiles missing, showerheads gone to the scavvers, or pipes rusted through. Only one of them worked. Xu watched him as he set down the towels and got the water started so it could heat up. With no outward sign that this was anything out of the normal routine for him, he stripped bare and got under the spray.

His body was as battered as hers, although not from the same sources. He was pocked with old bullet wounds and stab marks, lacerations and cuts. He only knew she’d followed him when he felt her fingers run along his spine, near a particularly gruesome but precise scar.

“Surgery?” she asked over the sound of the water.

“Neural implants,” he said over his shoulder. He held the soap out. “Here, make yourself useful.”

He was a bit surprised when she took it and swiped it over his skin. Another man would have shivered at her touch, but he didn’t. He let the water pound on his downturned head, his hands braced on the tiles and let her small deadly hands wash his back. But he wasn’t as impervious as he wanted to be. Her breasts brushed against his arm as she moved from his back to his front, getting under the spray herself. She didn’t push him out of the way; she didn’t need to. She fit under his outspread arms as if he was nothing more than an umbrella. She glared up at him.

“You’re hogging it, Kellogg.”

“Conrad.” She continued to glare at him. He took a single step back, letting the full force of the water hit her. She turned up her head and he saw the marks on her throat. Old, old ligature marks. Deep enough to scar. He stroked one as she rubbed the bar of soap through her hair, her eyes closed. “Cord or metal?”

“Metal,” she said.

“Combat or…?”

“It was all combat to me.” His fingers dropped away from her throat. He ran the back of his knuckles down her skin, following the spray. She didn’t move, but her nipples gave her away. They puckered as if he’d touched them instead of the inside curve. She’d grown perfectly still, her eyes on him. He met them silently.

“If you’re gonna do it, do it,” she said, almost too softly to hear.

“Do you want me to?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I am many things, little wonton. Killer for hire, mercenary, Institute heavy. I am not a rapist. I’m not gonna start at this late stage.”

“Don’t want that notch?”

“No, believe it or not, I don’t,” he replied, still running his knuckles down the insides of her breasts. He was hard, and knew she knew it too. It was practically touching her where she stood. She put the bar of soap into his hands.

“Wash me,” she said, and turned her back.

It had been a long time since he’d had his hands on a woman this way. So long he didn’t think he could remember. He lathered her, bumping over the scars gently, as if they might still hurt. He knew they didn’t, they were all well healed and older than he was, but still, there was something _obscene_ about touching them. He stepped closer and worked the soap over her shoulders and down her arms, across her belly and up her breasts. At some point the soap slipped from his hands, but neither of them bent to catch it. Her breath had hitched, the only sign that she was affected at all.

 _Ah, but you could find another_ , he thought to himself.

He let his fingers trail down between her legs and cupped her abruptly, sliding his longest finger inside her to feel how wet she was. She nearly made a sound, but choked it off. He grinned behind her where she couldn’t see.

“A contest of wills, is it?” he whispered in her ear.

“Who do you think will win?” she whispered back, turning her head just slightly, just enough that she could see his profile.

“Me. You.” He shrugged, a promising half smile curving his lips. “Both.” She’d fight for her share. He was looking forward to it. He wasn’t disappointed.

She turned in the confines of his arms and took him in her hand, still slippery with soap. He bit his own tongue to keep from making a sound. Her grin was fierce. He crowded her, pushing her back against the cold tiles. The water was cold too, but he didn’t care. He ran his palms over her, collarbone to breast to hip. He slid one hand under her thigh and lifted it, searching her eyes to make sure she was still with him. Her face was set in a hard line, but her hand hadn’t let go of his cock. She guided him to her body herself, rubbing the head of his penis against her clit before sliding him home.

“What do you want?” he asked, half buried in her heat. He stood motionless, neither giving nor taking.

“All of it,” she said harshly, placing her hands on his shoulders. His lifted her legs so she was spread wide, braced against the tiles, and slammed into her until he could go no further. She bit her lip, but didn’t cry out or moan. He swallowed his own groan over her tightness and stayed there, buried deep, feeling her pulse through his cock.

“What do you want now?” he asked, not even straining. She weighed practically nothing in his arms as her thighs were holding her in place around his hips. They were as strong as he’d imagined they were. Probably strong enough to squeeze the air of out him if she wanted.

“I want…” Her solid composure slipped and her eyes slid away from his.

“What do you want, Xu? Say it.”

“I want you to make me come.” He smiled and pulled out of her completely, dropping one of her legs to the floor of the shower. A momentary glimpse of confusion crossed her face before she wiped it clean, but still he grinned. Then he knelt on the hard tiles and pressed his tongue to her clit, her powerful thigh resting on his shoulder. She made no sound, but she shuddered. He pressed her harder, flattening his tongue on her flesh. For the briefest second her hand dropped onto the back of his head, but then it was gone. He leaned back just a little and flicked her, over and over. He could feel it building in her, he could taste it.

And when she came she was still silent, although he heard her head crack against the tiles as she threw it back. She was holding her breath, holding it in. And still the waves of her climax were coursing through her, making her jerk against his mouth. Before she could even come down from them, he stood again, spreading her as wide as he could. He plunged into her and fucked her like he’d been wanting to since she’d walked into his fort and announced she wasn’t going to kill him. He pounded her into the tiles and the force of it made a slapping noise of wet skin on the walls. Their gasping breaths were the only other sound. He came in her so hard he felt it run out of her and down her leg, a thin stream of warmth under the cold spray of the shower. He cupped his hands around her face, forcing her to look at him. She was still with him, her fierce little face lit up with emotion at last.  Something uncoiled in him, sinuous and dangerous.

“Damn,” was all he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zǎoshang hǎo - Good morning


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories and explanations and plans, oh my.

Xu shivered under the cold spray of the shower. Kellogg had stalked off, grabbing his towel and disappearing from sight. She cleaned herself up and shut off the water and took the one he’d left for her. She felt strange. It wasn’t the sex. The sex had been good. It had been a long time since she allowed anyone to touch her and she should have felt empowered. Instead she felt…hollow.

 _The word you’re looking for is unfulfilled_ , she berated herself. _Brought it on yourself, sacrificing the pleasure you could have had just to make a point about your own level of indifference. Make no mistake, the emotionless quality you’re trying to ignore was your own fault_.

“Lā shǐ,” she muttered under her breath. “Got myself good. And for what?”

She dried off then wrapped the towel around her. It wasn’t that she felt vulnerable now, just that she was cold with Kellogg's presence to keep her warm. Her clothes were right where he’d left them yesterday and while they stuck her to clammy skin, she felt better once she was dressed. Kellogg was nowhere in sight. She took a better look around the room now that she was alone. There were no mementos or keepsakes anywhere, she noticed immediately. The only lockboxes and storage containers around had medical supplies in them. The only working computer terminal was password locked. She could have hacked it if she wanted, but she wasn’t curious enough. Besides, it wouldn’t encourage trust.

 _Do you need to?_ Trust was a precious commodity in the Commonwealth. She had none to spare and wasn’t concerned with earning it from anyone else. So why did it matter so much now?

 _It doesn’t_ , she thought harshly, already knowing it for a lie.

She needed calm, she decided. It had been ages since she’d cleared her mind, centered her core. She sat cross legged on the floor in the spot where she’d done her yoga and closed her eyes, hands resting on her bent knees. She breathed…in…out…

Yes, calm.

***

The whistle of the bombs was sudden and shrieking. She hadn’t thought it would actually happen. Nathan grabbed the infant and shoved clothes at her to wear and they ran. They stumbled up the hill behind the house, dodging the crush of people equally trying to escape the incoming tide of radioactive dust, pushing past his neighbors and soldiers in the hated power armor. He’d pushed her into the center of the platform of the Vault, looking over her shoulder at the mushroom cloud as it loomed up into the sky.

“We’ll be all right,” he said, almost to himself. He didn’t look at her with caring or concern. She was property to him, a toy to exploit and use, gifted to him by a government with less concern for human rights than feelings of retribution. She couldn't even fathom why he was saving her too. It wasn't in keeping with how he'd treated her so far, unless he just didn't want to have the hassle of getting a new toy. He had no compassion in his gaze as they began their descent, as those too slow didn’t make it. The baby cried in his too tight grip, but she didn’t offer to take him. Emotion was wasted on him.

She was handed a blue Vault suit and told to hurry. Nathan’s grip on her arm was tight and painful, a warning. She slipped into the suit as fast as she could, before anyone could see. See his marks on her, the stamp of the US that branded her a prisoner of war and a slave. She was hustled into the pod and told it was for decontamination. The world became ice and darkness. And she laughed inside, another unwitting victim of Vault-Tec’s hideous experiments.

Well, maybe not so unwitting.

Back at her base in Alaska, they’d known. They’d known what Vault-Tec did with the government’s approval. With the government’s dollars. Too many were lost to sick experiments and ill planned tests. But too many more were lost when the bombs dropped and everything was utterly eradicated. That knowledge was part of the reason they were there. Who was worse? China or the US? Her comrades in arms thought that China was doing the right thing. That by fighting the US they would end the strife, expose the civil injustice, the sheer evil of that nation to the world.

After her capture and internment in San Francisco, she couldn’t disagree. Her own cellmates had been citizens. They had been branded just as she was. Links of flesh and blood, they formed a chain of misery. She never knew what happened to two little girls and their mother when Nathan came for her. She never saw the camp again as he sped her across the country. She would think of them as he beat her until he was hard, as he took her again and again until she was raw and bleeding.

Afterwards he would leave her be for a day or two. He wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t look at her. She would heal just enough before the cycle began again. Sometimes he would ask her things, as if he was trying to get information from her. But she had none to give. She was just an operative without a mission. She’d parachuted into Anchorage with the rest of her squadron in the dark for that fateful, final operation. They hadn’t even met their rendezvous before the American army arrived to ‘liberate’ their state from the ‘Communists’. Oh, the state of propaganda in the US. Xu would have laughed if her life hadn’t been threatened by it.

Once in Boston it was worse. Now she had the sad eyes of his wife on her conscience too. The sad wife, huge with child, bruises on her cheek. She would have killed Nathan herself if she could have. But he kept her penned in a room with only a bucket to piss in and a ratty old rug to sleep on. She didn’t even have clothes. It had been fine during the summer months, but then it was autumn and the nights were cold. Sometimes he’d leave her there for days, only opening the slot in the door to toss in a water bottle or food. And he’d come in after her grateful respite, and he’d whip her and rape her and ask questions she had no answers for. She didn’t know if he was trying to break her bones or just her spirit. He accomplished neither.

Then Nora left. In the dead of night Xu heard her go. It had been after an argument, loud shouts penetrating the walls of her makeshift prison, the sound of breaking furniture and the snap of fists on flesh. The baby cried and the woman left him there.

Xu practiced her yoga when she could move, and she meditated when she couldn’t sleep and she swore that somehow she’d get away. But then the bombs came and all was lost to the ice. And then Kellogg came into the Vault, two scientists with him wrapped in masking suits, their faces hidden. She watched as they opened Nathan’s pod, took the squalling child and when he fought back, Kellogg shot him in the head. The ringing sound of that gunshot echoed in her head, a toll of freedom. She’d pressed herself against the glass of the pod and smiled at him when he came up to her and mistakenly called her the backup. She went back into the ice with that smile still frozen on her lips.

Until…

***

“Hey,” she heard his voice. She came out of her meditative state and instantly rolled into a crouch, hands at the ready. He must have known how she’d react; he stood in the doorway, across the room from her.

“You shouldn’t startle me,” she said anyway, standing up smoothly.

“Why do you think I’m over here?”

“Where have you been?”

He held up a crate, smiling. She saw boxes and cans in it. “Grocery shopping.”

“Where did you find all this?” she asked after she followed him into the kitchen.

“The Mayoral Shelter. Synths there didn’t even say boo to me. Which means my clearance is still good.”

“Were you worried about it?” He paused in unpacking the crate of food. She started lining things up as he put them down, organizing them by size and contents.

“The Institute knows you haven’t killed me,” he said. “They will assume you are either dead or never went through with it and left. Those synths I sent away won’t talk, even if anyone asked them. Their programming is ridiculously easy to hack.”

“Why does it matter?”

“It means my primary mission is still a go.”

“The Glowing Sea?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s out there?”

“An Institute defector.”

“Are you supposed to kill him?”

“Yes.”

“I take it no one is allowed to do what he did?”

“Dr. Virgil is special. He worked in the BioScience Division. They work on highly classified projects. His defection could mean a lot of things, none of which the Institute wishes to risk becoming public knowledge.”

“What kind of classified projects?”

“If I knew that, I would have a bounty on my head too.” He went back to unloading his finds and she went back to organizing them.

“You’re making the assumption that you don’t already.”

“The Institute has paid well for my services so that I don’t go elsewhere. They’ve kept me caged by my own desire for upgrades. They know they have me over a barrel. Without their drugs and implants the pain will get worse until I’m useless. They know I’ll always come crawling back to them. I have to.” His tone was dark, nearly lifeless. He was nearly as much a slave as she had been.

“So what is the plan?”

“Virgil will be expecting someone. If it’s me, he’ll be ready to defend his life. It wouldn’t help, but he’d try. But you…he doesn’t know you. You could get in to talk to him before I have to make a move. He’ll be able to tell you how he got out, and maybe how you can get in.”

“How do you do it?”

Kellogg cocked his head at her. “I don’t, unless I need to be worked on. The Institute is underground, you see. No doors. Only way in or out is through molecular relay.”

“Teleportation, you mean?”

He chuckled. “Such a smart girl.”

“But you can’t tell me how to do it?”

“I don’t know how it works, Xu.” He turned around and leaned against the counter, his ever present cigar hanging from his mouth. “I’m rarely awake for it when they transfer me. You need a scientist. All I can tell you is that you’ll need a relay chip. Best bet? A courser.”

“That would be the reclamation type, yes? Black coats, no personality, high tech cloaking. Shit fighters.”

“Yeah. How’d you know? And it’s _synth retention_.”

“I’ve run across them once or twice.”

“The fucking Railroad,” Kellogg growled. She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. He chuckled again. “Thorn in the side of the SRB. Are you the one killing off coursers left and right? Hell, wonton, you’d probably be next on my to-do list after Virgil.”

“Lucky me.” His eyes roved over her, settling on her face only after a very thorough visual exploration.

“Yeah, you are.”

Unanticipated heat flowed through her, pooling in her belly. She went very still, her typical response to any bodily reaction. He saw it and cocked a grin around his cigar.

“Good thing I’ve changed my mind.”

“For now. I’ve got no illusions that you’re suddenly not a mercenary fucker. They throw enough caps and promises at you, you’ll probably try to take me out. Tell me, had you ever considered destroying the Institute on your own?”

“I’ve thought about it from time to time.” He acknowledged her assessment of him with another grin, this one wide enough to show teeth.

"I highly doubt my influence has anything to do with your sudden change of heart about it. So why are you really thinking about it now?”

“You know, I never get to see the survivors of my work. Usually because there aren’t any. You came looking for me. I wasn’t looking for you. I would have defended myself, sure. But I don’t attack without cause. And yeah, I admit, the cause is caps most of the time. But you came in here, wasted a full troop of synths without backup, without a plan, and without hope.” He stopped her from interrupting with a raised hand. “You had no food on you, no water, no chems. Two weapons. No armor. You were not expecting to walk out of here alive. I’m not an idiot.”

“No, you’re not.” She smirked sardonically. “But I was also not planning on getting hurt, or staying long enough to need food and water.”

“My point is that you’re more deadly on your own two feet than I could ever be, and I have a pretty good opinion of myself. I’ve earned it and I know it. You said it yourself. I know what war looks like. And I’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t get touchy feely about the Commonwealth as a whole. I got no use for it, and it’s got no use for me. But you…” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, ran a finger over her cheek. “For some reason you’re cleaning it up. You think I don’t know about you, wonton? You’re famous.”

“Means to an end,” she said flatly. “Every op for the Railroad, every scrap and clue from the Vault to Diamond City to Goodneighbor. My only goal was to get to you. I have no pre-war sentiment about how the world should be. Commonwealth or Institute, it doesn’t matter. It’s not my world. I don’t have a place in it.”

“Neither do I. I don’t care about saving the world. But I like living. I’d like to keep doing it.”

“So why destroy the Institute?”

“Because you made me think.  And Father set me up. He knew you’d come, he’s been watching you. He wanted you to kill me. He thought you would.”

“Shit, Kellogg.” She paused, going over his words. “How has he been watching me?”

“They have their ways. Birds, mostly. The birds around here are synths that act like cameras. I saw a couple of them on my way out.”

“Shit,” she repeated. “How am I supposed to get out of here then?”

“We’ll get to that.” He chucked her under her chin. She sneered but it didn’t have any heat. He was getting to her.

 _First rule, don’t get close_.

“Why does he want you dead?”

“I’m a liability to his master plan, or so he thinks. See, he thinks you’re his mother. According to the records, you’re Nora Jones, wife of Nathan Jones, mother of Shaun Jones. I’m the mercenary fucker, as you so adroitly put it, that killed his father. And I know entirely too much about how the Institute runs and how well it’s guarded. I’ve worked there longer than anyone else, Father included. And yet I'm still just a dirty topsider to them. I think he was hoping to kill two birds with one stone. Take care of me permanently, and get on your good side by letting you enact a little vengeance on behalf of your supposed torn up family. Clever bastard.”

“Cold.”

“Sociopathic,” Kellogg agreed with a nod. “The Institute tends to breed them that way.”

“I imagine some of it is genetic,” Xu said sourly.

“Could be. I’m not asking for details.” Kellogg stubbed out his spent cigar and slouched against the counter. “There’s no easy way to do this, Xu. Unless you can come up with a better plan, we need a courser chip, an explanation from Virgil and some little white lies to get you into the Institute.”

“You want me to pretend to be Nora.”

He shrugged. “It would work. No one else besides you and me knows you’re not.”

“And what would you do in the meantime while I’m pretending to be his mother?”

“My mission.”

“So you’d still take out Virgil. There’s a lot of details unaccounted for if things go sideways.”

“Yes. That’s the gamble. It always is.”

“How do we know Virgil isn’t in on the plan to off you?”

“We don’t.”

“You haven’t told me how you plan to sneak me out of here if the place is being watched.”

“They can’t report what they don’t see.”

“Cloaking tech.”

“You got it, wonton.”

“Give me some to think about it.”

“All right. Don’t take too long. I’ve been sittin’ on this assignment long enough already.” He turned back to the boxes neatly lined up on the counter. “Lunch?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lā shǐ - shit


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life's a bitch when you realize you're still human.

Kellogg stood on the roof of Fort Hagen and watched the blimp settle into position. From his best guess, he’d say it was over the old airport. He had no idea what it was, although radio chatter told him it had something to do with the Brotherhood of Steel. He’d heard of them, of course. His wanderings across the nation had taken him to all sorts of places. Once they had been a less than impressive remainder of the military. Now they were cohesive and organized. Powerful. He couldn’t care less about their ideals, but he wondered if maybe it wasn’t worth seeing which side they were on. A new player could change the game.

 _Like Xu_.

He hadn’t been lying when he told her Father had set him up. He just hadn’t told her the whole truth about his reasons for destroying the one place he could get strong enough painkillers. She hadn’t asked, but he figured she knew he was keeping a few things tucked close. Hell, he didn’t even want to dive into the things _she_ was hiding.

He’d never fit in anywhere, even as a kid. He remembered his early years, huddled and meek under his father’s thumb. He remembered wanting his mother to be proud of him, and his determination never to end up like his old man.

Well, he hadn’t, although not the way he’d planned. He’d grown into a big, tough brawler. Rough around the edges, barely curbed violent streak. He liked to run his mouth, and had the fists to back it up. Or a gun. Sarah had changed that. For a while at least.

 _No…don’t go there_ , his mind said.

 _Tough_.

Shit happened and there was no way to prevent it, other than being a different man in the first place. He hadn’t deserved the happiness he had with her. He hadn’t known what he had until it was gone. He swore he’d never let down his guard again. And that had worked well for him for the better part of a century or so. Sure, it was lonely, but it was safer. He had no vulnerabilities, no ties. And no one else was in danger because of their association with him.

 _That’s guilt you’re feeling_ , _Connie_.

 _Fuck off, that’s wisdom_.

Years of caravan duty, mercenary work and the inevitable downward spiral towards hired killer hadn’t made him a monster. Xu was right about that. He did what he had to, took no pleasure in anything other than the caps and went on his way. But the Institute…ah, that was another story.

We can make you stronger, they said. We can make you resistant, they said. You’ll live forever, they said. They hadn’t said what it would cost his soul. But so what? He had nothing in his soul to care about losing, right?

He sighed, seeing his breath on the cold night air.

Right.

 _Thank you_ , she’d said. Never once in his whole long fucking life had anyone said those words with quite the same heartfelt sentiment behind them. He wasn’t a hero, he knew that. He was the furthest thing from a hero. But for one brilliant second, he’d been hers. And it mattered.

Dammit, it _mattered_.

And she was right. Places like the Institute were what had ruined the world in the first place. He’d never let it bother him because they were a source of caps, of tech. He’d been in the Commonwealth for nearly 70 years. He’d seen places like Diamond City grow, he’d seen Goodneighbor turn from a run of the mill shithole into a thriving community. Granted you didn’t want to get on Mayor Hancock’s bad side, but he’d never had reason to so it wasn’t an issue.

He’d seen the Commonwealth begin to heal, with no help from the Institute. They weren’t interested in helping anyone but themselves. That sort of isolationism wasn’t going to help anyone in the long run. The Institute was a plague. He knew how to treat an infection. It was sort of impossible to miss once he thought about it. It was time to level the playing field.

He didn’t think it was altruism on his part; he didn’t have much of that left in him. But Xu was right. The Commonwealth deserved to make it on its own, or not at all. It wasn’t like the world would miss it if it all went to shit. Everywhere else had.

He threw his cigar out over the roof, watching the glowing end fade into the night. Like he was. He felt the years on him, felt the pain with every new procedure, every new ‘upgrade’. He needed a new spinal cord. Again. Or maybe he just needed to die already and be done with it.

 _Go out with a bang_ , he thought. _What a bang it will be_.

***

Xu was curled up asleep in the bed went he went back in. He’d reset the turrets so they shouldn’t get any unwelcome visitors, but he wasn’t really worried about it anyway. Between the two of them nothing would get past them.

Although, he wasn’t so sure what the tiny ninja would do right now since she was sleeping like a child, hands tucked under her chin, face so free of her normal suspicious expression she almost looked like someone else. Other than the fact that he could see her bare shoulder above the covers, the one with the brand on it, he would have said she _was_ an innocent child. How old was she anyway?

He stripped off his worn leather jacket and dropped in on a chair. Chin on his fist he watched her. They’d spent the rest of the day as if the morning had never happened. There was no awkwardness about it, there was just no reference to it. They’d made their plans, they’d discussed options and strategies and contingencies. They’d cobbled together a respectable feast from the food he’d found. They’d even topped off the meal with a whole dusty bottle of whiskey. But they didn’t talk about what happened between them. He should have been fine with that. It wasn’t like he loved her or anything, nor she him. He didn’t think the sex had been bad. He unknowingly smirked smugly remembering how good it was. _A contest of wills_. The real contest would have been in attempting to fight the inevitability of it.

In the morning she’d be gone. That was part of the plan. They’d found some stealth boys – which she sniggered over when she saw them, something about stolen copies of Chinese tech – and during the early morning glow when the shadows were long she would slip away, returning to her settlements to prepare for her trip to the Glowing Sea. He would wait three more days before following, tying up his loose end of an assignment before making his report to the Institute. They wouldn’t see each other again until after that, he assumed.

Of course, plans could go awry. That was the way of the world. They had this one night left, and something in him craved to be let out.

 _Just this once_ , he told himself.

He finished stripping and slid into the bed with her. He pulled her into him, feeling her breasts on his arm as he tucked his hand around her, feeling her shoulders shift into his chest, her small buttocks fitting to his hips. It had been so long since he’d curled up with a woman. The memory of the last one was painfully jagged. He could bleed on it if he let himself.

“Kellogg?” Xu whispered, coming awake so fast he barely had time to register the change in her breathing.

“Yeah?” he whispered back, his chin tucked into the hollow between her shoulder and her neck.

“What are you doing?”

“You complainin’, wonton?” His legs moved against hers and almost against her will she wiggled into him. He knew he could never let her see the grin spreading on his face.

“Hmph,” she grunted. She wiggled some more, but it was to get comfortable, not to get away.

“Careful there, you’ll get more than you bargained for.”

“You mean you will.” She deliberately moved her hips against him and he heard her satisfied snort of amusement when his cock hardened and pressed into the gap between her thighs. It wasn't a laugh, but he'd take what he could get.

“Want me to let you get back to sleep?” he asked. He felt an urge to run his teeth along the tendon of her neck and decided not to ignore it. She drew in a sharp breath but didn’t say anything. His erection grew more insistent. It also slid along her easily. “You’re so wet already, wonton. I’ve barely touched you.”

“Fuck you,” she whispered.

“Come and get it,” he growled. With a neat little flip she turned herself over in his arms, facing him.

“Why?” she queried. He didn’t think she was asking him why she had to make the first move.

“Last chance to do it right,” he said, stroking his fingers over her back, feeling every ridge and scar. Damn, he wanted to kiss her. Did he even remember how?

“Feeling sentimental, Conrad?” she asked sharply, but her body told him a different story of her mood. She was pliant and warm and her hands were on him, moving restlessly over his skin. This was so opposite to the mindless carnality of that morning. This was intimate and tender.

“Maybe I just want to hear you moan, just one time.”

“Only once?” she raised a single eyebrow at him.

“Hmm, maybe twice.”

“Think you’re up for it, old man?” He leaned into her, and she let him, pressing her flat against the mattress. He slid a leg between hers and she wrapped herself around him like a vine. He could feel her wetness on his thigh and pressed it up higher, teasing. She hitched that gasping breath again but made no other sound.

“Was that a challenge, wonton?”

“Bring it, Kellogg,” she just about snarled.

He laughed low in his chest, just a rumble. Her hands stilled on him for the merest moment before they returned to his back, pulling him closer. He’d watched her enough to know that when she felt something she went still and silent. He raised his leg higher, forcing her to spread open for him. He laid his weight on her, not crushing, just present. Her hands linked behind his head.

“So, just how flexible are you?” he rasped, holding his face just inches away from hers. Again with the raised brow.

“Why don’t find out?”

He grinned. “I think I will.”

Before he could think better of it, he leaned down and pressed his mouth against hers. She opened up for him as if she’d been expecting it. Her hands stroked from the back of his neck to cup his face. She felt small and vulnerable in his arms, but he never for a moment forgot that she wasn’t. He shifted his other leg so he was solidly between hers and devoured her. He kissed her hard and deep, his tongue battling hers for dominance until they were both breathless. He moved down her throat, skimming the garrote marks with his lips, nipping her collarbones with his teeth. He stroked his hand down the length of her body until he could fit it under her leg, pushing it up until her knee was at her shoulder. His hard cock fell into the space he’d made, brushing up against her heat.

She was spread so wide it wouldn’t have taken more than a tilt of his hips to enter her, but he didn’t. Not yet. Not until she was begging. She had an appreciative gleam in her eye for his teasing restraint. Her lips were bruised and red in the light of the room and he moved up so he could capture them again, sucking her lower one between his teeth. He was snugged up to her body and she squirmed against him, teasing in her own way. Her nipples brushed his chest, back and forth, just as her hips made her sex brush his cock, back and forth, wetting him.

“Impatient?” he inquired.

“No,” she lied with a pout. He laughed and it wasn’t as rusty as it had been yesterday.

“Is this what you want?” He reached down and positioned himself so the head of his cock slipped in her, just a little. Not nearly enough for either of them. She made a sound in the back of her throat. It wasn’t a moan, or a gasp. Almost a hiccup. He pulled out and pushed in, just to see if she’d make the sound again. She glared at him with a mock frown and stayed silent. “C’mon, Xu, you know you want to moan for me.”

“You haven’t earned it,” she said, her breath calm. Too calm.

“Fine,” he returned. “Let’s see what I can do about that.”

Without releasing his grip on her leg he worked his way down her body, lavishing her breasts, her ribs, belly. When he reached the soft black curls of her vulva he blew on them and was rewarded with a shiver, but no sound. With a chuckle he let go of her leg, sliding his fingers down the back of her thigh smoothly and into her willing body. She arched up her hips and when he glanced up at her she had her eyes closed, her head thrown back. He toyed with her, stroking and fondling before he pushed two fingers into her folds, curling them back toward her pubic bone. And she shouted.

She hadn’t come, but she was close. He dropped his head and licked all he could reach with his hand in the way, flicking her clit and fingering her hard until the spasms were unstoppable.

“Con…”

“Go on,” he murmured against her flesh. “Do it.”

On a long shuddering groan she came into his mouth, drenching his fingers up to the knuckle. He pulled his hand away and raised up above her, sliding his cock into her in one smooth thrust. She couldn’t stop her noises then, not as he pounded at her, holding her leg up to her shoulder while the other one wrapped around his ass. Her small hands clenched around his wrists by her head, holding on so tightly he could feel her nails in his skin. He ground his hips against her, rolling and pushing her higher on the bed. And she was still moaning his name.

Damn, what a sound.

He leaned back suddenly, sitting on his knees, and pushed both her legs up until she was spread as wide as she could be with him stuck in her. She whimpered now, and he could feel her fluttering against his cock, making him harder than before.

“Gonna come again?” he asked softly. She thrashed on the bed.

“Damn you…” she moaned.

“I like that, wonton. Do that again.”

“Damn you,” she said, firmer. He held himself still, denying her. “Ah, fuck…bùyào tíngzhǐ, bùshì xiànzài…don’t stop…don’t stop…”

He gave her what she wanted and tucked one hand under her ass, bringing her hips up to his. Long slow strokes brought on quivers in her legs, and with his other thumb he rubbed her clit. She imploded around his cock, tight and squeezing and it was his turn to groan. He fell forward onto her, folding her in half, filling her as he climaxed until he saw stars behind his eyelids. When their breathing grew slower and gentler, he pulled out of her and rested his forehead against hers.

“Damn that was good,” she whispered.

“It was, wasn’t it? Was it worth it?” She touched her fingers to his cheek, tracing the long scar there. He raised his eyes to hers and waited.

“Yes. It was.”

“Good.”

He drifted off to sleep with her curled up against him. And when he woke, she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bùyào tíngzhǐ, bùshì xiànzà - don't stop, not now


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the best option is the one you didn't even consider.

“Tien Xu,” Mayor Hancock said when he saw her standing just inside the gate of Goodneighbor. He was leaning against the end post of a low wall, ankles crossed, twirling a combat knife across his palm. “To what does my humble town owe the dubious honor?”

She turned to face him, schooling her expression so it didn’t show how happy she was to see him. Ghoulish features aside, he was one of the few people welcome in her life. She couldn’t help it if she found his features shocking any more than he could help being that way. He’d never taken offense once he learned she was pre-war and new to life in the Commonwealth. It had taken some time to get used to ghouls. But she had to admit they were the perfect adaptation to this irradiated world. They were just people trying to survive like anyone else. Some did it better than others. Hancock had always been effortlessly charming…and disarming. She had to be careful around him; he was too perceptive and could read people almost as well as she could.

“Hancock,” she acknowledged without answering his question. He gave her a quick grin, not buying her stoic act.

He pushed away from the post and deftly pocketed the knife. Her introduction to him and his town hadn’t been exactly pleasant, but it hadn’t set the tone either. Goodneighbor was secretly her favorite place in the Commonwealth, but she’d never let him know that. Hancock was probably her favorite person in the Commonwealth too, if that meant anything, but she definitely couldn’t tell him that. He had enough ego as it was. Whether it was due to his influence or not she was comfortable there, even though she was always looking over her shoulder. Perhaps that was _why_ she was so comfortable. The tension was high, everyone was always on alert. No guards were dropped anywhere within these walls. Even his. She understood that, she respected that.

“So, are you plannin’ to start another street brawl?” Hancock drawled with a glint of humor in his expression. It was always so hard to read him. She prided herself on being an excellent judge of character, it was in her training after all. She knew he would never harm her, but he wouldn’t necessarily step in to prevent anyone else from doing it. Their relationship was equal parts prickly and affectionate. It worked for them. And he knew she could handle herself. _Just ask Finn_ , she thought, recalling the oaf who’d tried to extort caps from her when she’d first arrived. He’d gotten a lesson quick. Shame he didn’t live to put it into practice.

“Not at all,” she breezed. “I just need to find a hazmat suit.”

That got his attention. “Why?” She tilted her head and regarded him coolly. She knew he wasn’t actually expecting her to answer; she rarely did. After a moment he smiled, all teeth. “KLEO should have one,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

“There go my caps,” she replied with a dramatic sigh. She attempted to walk past him to Kill or Be Killed, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.

“I don’t mean to pry…”

“But you will anyway.” She waited, patient. Hancock was a good person, in her opinion, so he was granted certain liberties. Her forbearance, for instance. He had a temper to be sure, and his reckless recreational use of chems was something she could not abide, but hey, who was she to judge how someone got their kicks?

“There are only a few reasons why a smoothskin needs a hazmat suit. You’re not an aimless wanderer, Xu. You have a specific destination in mind. One high in rads. You need a sexy gun at your back?” She knew his offer was genuine, and he’d made it before. But Xu didn’t like to travel with anyone. It wasn’t personal, it was just practical. Having a companion meant being concerned with what happened to them. She trusted her own abilities more than she trusted anyone else’s. He hadn’t seemed put off by that when she’d told him once after too many of Charlie’s drinks.

“You just want any excuse to slack, don’t you?” she asked, almost teasing. Almost.

He laughed, easy and carefree. “Sister, I’m an expert at slacking.” He settled back against the post, looking her over. “You look good. Like somebody’s been keepin’ you up nights, but not in a bad way.”

Shit, was it so obvious? She frowned. She didn’t want to think about Con…Kellogg. He would only distract her. Make her miss him.

 _That, that right there is why you travel alone_ , she thought to herself.

“Why do you need to go to the Glowing Sea?” Hancock asked, low and gravelly, his voice so different but similar to Kellogg’s. Enough so that her body reacted, something Hancock’s voice had never managed to do before. Or maybe it was because Kellogg had spoiled her.

 _Where the fuck did_ that _come from?_

“What makes you think that’s where I’m headed?” she asked before she could stop herself. Dammit, he always managed to get her to talk. He smirked, knowing full well what was going on in her head. Perceptive.

“You ever find what you were lookin’ for?” he asked instead.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Then you’re onto the next bit of intel, right?” She sighed. It was hopeless trying to get anything past this man.

“Yes.”

“And it’s there, ain’t it? In the Glowing Sea. Sister, nothin’ but rads and crazies are out there.”

“So I’ve been told.” He looked at her sharply at that.

“By whom?” He waited, arms crossed and when she didn’t answer he cracked a grin. “C’mon lemme buy ya a drink, and you can tell Uncle Hancock all about it.”

“You know I won’t.” He shrugged.

“I get enough whiskey in ya, ya will.”

“I’m not falling for that again.”

He grinned, but nevertheless began to steer her towards the Third Rail, his arm companionably over her shoulder. And she let him. Oddly enough, she didn’t feel threatened by his constant overtures of friendship, and he had never seemed threatened by her menacing demeanor. He just took it in stride, the way he took everything.

“Sister, you gotta do better than that if you want me to believe you.”

***

“So, you wanna break into the Institute,” he said, much later, after too many empty bottles lined the table in the VIP room and not enough food had been eaten to counteract them. “You have good odds?”

“Maybe, more or less,” she sighed. At some point he’d gotten her to stretch out on a sofa and her feet were in his lap. Now that she was drunk, he was almost appealing. It wasn’t his skin that had always bothered her, or even his nose, well the lack thereof. No, it was the blank jet of his eyes. She couldn’t read them. And his body language changed so often depending on his state of inebriation that it was hard to pin him down to anything like a pattern. He was loose and untroubled by most things, dangerously complacent about his own well-being and easily spurred to violence. He lacked discipline in her mind. She had a sneaky suspicion that was why she liked him, though. He was her opposite in every way, but it didn’t come between them understanding each other.

“This plan of yours seems too complicated and time consuming. Why don’t you just sneak in the way synths sneak out?”

His simple words fell on her like a ton of bricks. Why hadn’t they thought of that? It startled her so much she nearly sat up and fell off the sofa. He must have known, since he put a restraining hand on her knee, keeping her down. He was laughing but it was silent.

“You commando types, always gotta break down the front door. I expected better of you, Xu. Why you aimin’ to make it all difficult on yourself?” He let go of her knee and leaned back, sprawled along the sofa like a cat. She found herself envious of his ease. She always did. “Who you been talkin’ to anyway to give you this idea? Railroad activity has been quiet and there’s only so many people who know what the Institute is really up to.”

“Dammit, Hancock…”

“All right, fine. I won’t ask where you’re gettin’ your info from. Don’t be so touchy. Just…take care not to get blown away, all right? You got what it takes to make a difference here, and I don’t want to see that potential lost for some shit ideal.”

“Why do you even care?” she asked, exasperated by him, like always.

“Woman, I know you ain’t got a lot of friends. I like to think I’m one of’em. I care what happens to you, Xu. Is it really that hard to accept?”

Was it? He didn’t ask anything of her. He was practically the only one who hadn’t. “Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll try not to get killed. Happy?”

“As a bloatfly in shit.” She chortled. He looked pleased with himself for making her laugh. “C’mon, oh stealthy mistress of death. You need food and sleep, and maybe not in that order. I’ll put you up tonight and you can go back to…whoever and tell them your plans have been simplified.”

 _Trust is a precious commodity in the Wasteland_ , she reminded herself. She took a deep breath and gave it for the first time. “It’s Kellogg.”

“No shit?” He didn’t even seem that surprised. She pouted a little and knew she was more than a _little_ drunk. _Never drink with Hancock_ , she also reminded herself. “I ain’t askin’ how _that_ happened. Kellogg’s got a pretty tough reputation, but then again, so do you. Thought he was a pretty loyal stooge, though.”

“A tool, Hancock, he’s a tool of the Institute, nothing more. Who better? Anyone with the proper training can wield a tool.”

“Uh huh, that’s not all you’re givin’ off, but I said I wouldn’t pry.” He stood up, shoving her feet out of his lap so they thumped on the floor. “Sleep, Xu. You’ll be useless without it.”

“Pfft, like you’d know. Ghouls don’t sleep.”

“Sure we do. We just don’t need as much.” He extended a hand to her and she took it. He led her out of the Third Rail and into the State House. He tucked her in, nice and friendly, onto a cot in the attic where no other drifters would see her. “The devil’s in the details, Xu. Keep it simple and mind the details. I plan on seein’ your face back in my town once it’s all over.”

“All right, you will.” He even pecked her forehead before he left and she didn’t stop him. For a moment he stopped at the door, half turned so she could see his narrow profile.

“Goodneighbor’s of the people, for the people. You tell Kellogg if he needs to lay low, as long as he don’t make trouble, he’s welcome. I got no beef with him. He’s never done anything to complicate my life. I know this ain’t gonna be pretty, for either of you. Get in, get out, stay safe.”

“Thanks, Hancock,” she said, drifting off. She always slept well in Goodneighbor, she realized. Fort Hagan was the only other place where that happened. _Damn his degenerate, nonjudgmental hide,_ she thought _. He’s made it feel like a home to me_.

In the morning she tiptoed down the stairs to Hancock’s ‘office’ where she found him laid out on one of his ratty sofas like he’d been there all night. Empty Jet inhalers and bottles of beer littered his coffee table, as well as an empty bowl of noodles next to one that was still full. His hat was tipped over his eyes, but she didn’t think he was asleep.

“Mornin’, sunshine,” he said, confirming her suspicion. “There’s still noodles left if you want’em.”

“You know, you are nearly as good as I am. Why do you waste your time being Mayor of Goodneighbor?” She went and a picked up the bowl she saw sitting there, steaming already. She ate quickly and neatly, only the click of the chopsticks any indication of her movement. She sank onto the end of the coffee table because he took up all the space on the sofa, which she had to admit was impressive considering he wasn’t much bigger than she was.

“Because I like it here.” He tipped his head back to look at her. “’Sides, where else would I go? You won’t take me with you.”

“Better for both of us that way. I’d want to kill you myself after your first hit of Jet.” She drank down the broth and stacked the empty bowl into his. They didn’t topple or audibly click together and she was once again amused at her own ability to turn everything into a strategic challenge. As if her dirty bowl not making any noise was going to save her life by not giving away her position.

“Prob’ly true. You off then?”

“Yeah.” She shifted on her butt and his eyes narrowed.

“It’s not like you to be hesitant, Xu. What’s going on?”

“I…thank you, Hancock.”

“For what?”

“For being you.” He smiled, beatific and serene. She snorted and leaned over to him to snatch his hat clean off his head. “How high are you?”

“Pretty fuckin’,” he admitted with a loose shrug. “Go on now, before your loverboy runs off and makes things complicated.”

She sighed and did something she’d never done before. She stood over him laying on the sofa, bent and pressed a kiss to his bald brow. She dropped his hat over his face and left, hearing his laughter all the way to the door.

***

Now that she knew what she was looking for, she saw the crows around Fort Hagen.

Two were perched in a bare tree across the road from the entrance and another pair was sitting atop the Red Rocket Truck Stop, facing the building nearby. She compared them to the other birds roosting quietly or pecking through garbage around the fort. On first glance they weren’t any different; they flew off when something startled them, like the pebbles she’d been throwing. They pecked and cawed and did normal bird things.

But they always returned to the same spot, each and every time. She ran out of the pebbles, but she’d found the pattern. They were watching the only way in or out that wasn’t buried beneath a parking garage, likely Kellogg’s access on the roof that he used.

“Huh,” she muttered to herself. “Well, I guess that way is out, then.”

She waited until the cover of darkness and slipped around the fort, giving it a wide berth, before heading down into the garage, picking her way silently and carefully. Once inside she went through the maze of rooms and corridors until she reached the hallway that led to his living quarters. Dead synths still littered the place. She heard the ticking of the turrets he’d reset.

Damn, she’d forgotten about them. She was getting soft.

She was tired and didn’t feel like sneaking past them, so she went into the spare room where a computer terminal was attached to the wall and hacked it, powering them down before she walked down the corridor that led to him. It was quiet, peaceful. She hadn’t appreciated the ambiance when she’d been fighting for her life against mindless robots intent on keeping her out.

She opened the door to Kellogg’s home and came face to face with the barrel of his pistol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just because everyone needs a little Hancock in their life.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The memories of an old merc can never be more than bitter.

“Damn it, Xu, what are you doing here?” Kellogg said, dropping the pistol from her face. He had something that felt disturbingly like fear that he’d nearly shot her coursing through him. She was frowning at him, but that wasn’t unusual.

“Can I come in?” she inquired, overly polite to the point of it being sarcastic.

“Fuck it, yes. Get in here. Do I need to reset the turrets?”

“Um, yeah…” she replied absently, floating past him on her light feet. She looked tired. He reset the turrets, simultaneously adding her bio-signature to them so she wouldn’t have to do that again. He stoutly tried to ignore the voice in his head that was wondering why he was doing that. When he came back into his room he found her sitting on his bed, right in the center.

“You’re still dressed, so I’m guessing this isn’t a social call?”

“Do you want it to be?”

Did he? Yeah, he did. How about that?

“Maybe in a minute. Why are you here? I thought you’d be in the Glowing Sea by now.”

“Conrad, tell me truly, do you want to kill Virgil?” She cocked her head to the side, making her appear more like a child than she normally did. Of course, he knew better, but still, her appearance was incredibly elfin and…adorable.

 _Dammit, Connie, get a grip on yourself_.

“He’s my assignment…” She made a sound of impatience and he cut himself off. She was actually asking him what _he_ wanted. “Do I want to? No, not really.”

“Is it because you don’t want to traipse off to certain irradiated death or because you don’t really want to end his life?” She seemed intent on his answer and he thought about it. He slid the pistol into his hip holster and leaned against a table while he was at it. Her eyes never strayed from him, but she gave nothing of her own thoughts away. He didn’t know what she wanted to hear. Not like it mattered, he would have given her the truth anyway. He wasn’t a liar.

“I don’t want to traipse into certain irradiated death,” he said with a sigh. She nodded, as if she’d expected him to say that. He didn’t know if he should be affronted or not that she wasn’t judging him for being so willing to kill a man who hadn’t done him any wrong. He knew he’d reached the point in his life where none of it mattered anymore. He was just a mercenary killer, that’s all he’d amounted to. He didn’t like it, but it was also too late to change it. Right?

“What if I told you there was another way into the Institute?”

“What way?”

“How do synths escape, Conrad?” And then she smiled, sweet and charming and deadly. “I was recently reminded by a friend that there is a way into the Institute. The same way escaped synths get out. Why make it complicated? We could be in an out with no one the wiser. And without unnecessary complications.”

“A friend, huh?”

She eyed him sharply, raising her chin, daring him to say anything else. Daring him to be jealous when they’d never made any promises. “Yes, the same friend that has extended you a warm _neighborly_ welcome should you need one, as long as you stay out of trouble.” And at that she raised a single brow in teasing.

“I wasn’t aware you were friends with Mayor Hancock.”

“There are many things you are not aware of about me, Kellogg,” she said through her teeth. That was fair, and he made a face that said he agreed.

“So is that the way you want to do it?”

“Simplicity is always the way I prefer to do things.”

“Hmm, does that mean I can fuck you now?”

And she laughed.

She laughed long and hard enough that she fell backwards on the bed, her arms outspread. She was still chortling when he climbed over her, up her body, to rest on his elbows above her face. He took in the flush in her cheeks that laughing had put there. There were tiny crinkles in the corner of her eyes that hadn’t been there before. Her lips were curved and relaxed, her teeth flashed white in her sallow face. She raised an eyebrow at him when he remained where he was, watching the transformation of emotion on her.

“I’ve never heard you laugh before, wonton. I liked it.”

“I thought you said you were going to fuck me,” she retorted.

“Oh, I’ll get to it.” He rolled to her side, sweeping away stray strands of her hair from her face. She went very still under his touch, and he half smiled in response. Always with the stillness when she felt something deeply. “You know, I think I missed you.”

“We barely know each other,” she whispered. “And I only left this morning.”

Something was stirring in his gut, that long coiled something that reared up in him when she was near. He knew what it was, tried hard to ignore it. Wouldn’t put it into words. He wanted it like he hadn’t wanted anything for as long as he could remember. He also knew he shouldn’t have it. He wasn’t worth wasting it on.

“I still missed you. And you left in the middle of the night, without saying goodbye.”

“Was a goodbye necessary?”

Was it?

His fingers fell on the zipper of her jacket and he tugged it down. He didn’t hurry; he didn’t have to. He’d made such a habit of getting on with it he had forgotten what it could really be like when he took his time. And he wanted to take his time. He wanted to enjoy every moment.

He must be going crazy.

“You look nervous,” he said, catching her eye. She looked like she wanted to bolt, like she wanted to run. She also looked like she was trying to fight the urge. “You don’t let anyone in, do you?”

“That’s dangerous. And tactically weak.”

“It is,” he agreed, pulling the jacket apart now that he had it unzipped. As usual she had no shirt under it, so her skin was laid bare. He trailed his fingertips up the cleavage barely held together by the edges of the jacket, chuckling at her sharp indrawn breath. “You’re so sensitive.”

“Lack of stimulus,” she breathed. She wasn’t nearly as calm as she sounded, he could tell by the width of her pupils. He leaned over her and captured her lips in a kiss, sliding his hand under the jacket to cup her breast at the same time. She made a noise somewhere in the back of her throat.

“You’ve been touched plenty, Xu. Just never the right way.”

“I…” Her face wanted to crumple, he could see it. Memories, hard and ugly, surfaced in her eyes.

“Hey…stay with me now.” He brushed her nipple with his fingertips, bringing her attention back to the here and now. “I would never hurt you, wonton.”

“So you’d kill me quick?”

“If I had to, yes.” His swift assessment, combined with the bald truth, actually made her relax under his touch. She breathed easier, her body became pliant. She knew what he was, he’d never denied it. He appreciated her respect for it. He felt she had earned the right to hear the rest of it. Or maybe he felt the need to say it out loud. “I would do whatever it took to prevent that from being necessary, though.”

“What about caps and upgrades?” she whispered, trying – and failing – to keep a mocking tone. This was a fine line they were treading. He looked into her face, studied it. He knew she was doing the same.

“You’re one of a kind, Tien Xu. There would never be enough caps.”  It was as close as he could get to saying the words, to expressing the idea, even to himself.

“They told us to never get close,” she said carefully. “It’s a dangerous job, black ops. Never let anyone in, never let down your guard. Never trust. I live by those rules, Conrad.”

“You’re not in black ops anymore. You’re with me.”

He crushed his mouth to hers before she could speak. And suddenly they were tearing at each other, pulling away clothes, sucking and biting and straining to reach. _So much for taking it slow_ , he thought. When at last they were naked, he entered her smoothly, filling her up until she could take no more. Her legs wrapped around him like a vise, her arms around his neck. She didn’t hold back the sounds as he thrust into her again and again.

They rolled across the bed, fighting for supremacy. Her slight form was no match for his strength, but she managed to pin him down, riding him until they were sweating. She was glorious on top, face flushed, hair plastered to her skull, breasts heaving. Her small hands clung to his chest, digging in, leaving marks. He was already near to coming, but he sensed she wasn’t.

He sat up and threw off her stride. He wrapped his arms around her and flipped her onto her back again, pulling out and laying a path of wet kisses down her body until he reached her wet slit. With hands and tongue he brought her bucking off the mattress, shouting as he found the right places to bring her to peak. He lapped at her until she was whimpering and curled his fingers in her until she shuddered.

When she came she called his name. She was bowed up like a spring, like he released something in her that was desperate to escape the confines of her skin. He pushed her through the aftershocks, kept her on the fine edge between pleasure and pain until she was squirming and writhing.

“You’ll pay,” she gasped out between panting breaths.

He chuckled. “Make me.”

He flipped her over onto her stomach and hauled her onto her knees. He plunged into her from behind, deep and hard. She cried out, the sound muffled by the mattress in her face. He knew she could take it and he pounded into her. She was tighter around his cock, pulsing. He braced himself on one hand so he could reach around and rub her clit with the other. Her back curved, her hips slammed into his and she came around him like a bomb. He groaned and followed her.

***

She was asleep on her side, facing him, her fingers curled into his chest. _I am a fool_ , he thought. He let the creeping feeling that went up his spine every time he looked at her make itself at home.  He gave up the fight against it. He loved her, and he was a fool for doing it. He knew she couldn’t possibly love him back, as that would involve letting him in. He’d sworn he’d never love again after Sarah. Love made you weak. Love had no power over death. He wasn’t so sure he wanted Xu to love him back. He didn’t want her to be weak. He couldn’t imagine her as vulnerable or conflicted.

Not since the moment she’d first walked into the fort, when she’d first touched his cheek and thanked him for saving her life. That one moment of hesitation when she hadn’t known how he would react to her lack of hostility…that was the only time he’d ever seen her be less than invincible. He didn’t want her to be any other way. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if something happened to her. And so he was a fool.

He’d never gotten to bury his family. Sarah, so slender and young. So sweet and trusting. And Mary. So tiny in his hands, so precious and vulnerable. He’d crossed the length and breadth of this country to get away from the memories, never succeeding. He’d run from his guilt for not protecting them. He ran from the knowledge that having a family at all was his downfall, his one weakness.

 _I wouldn’t want to have to bury her too_ , he thought.

He had taken odd jobs, scraping by on alcohol and violence, until he reached the Commonwealth after Sarah and Mary’s deaths. He’d made his peace with the world by then, or at least whatever passed for peace. He wasn’t happy, he wasn’t content, but he was wealthy. He was powerful. He was not weakened by emotion. Caps could buy a lot of company, and a lot of liquid forgetfulness. The world was a cold, hard place where terrible things happened to good people and there was nothing he knew to do about it. The Commonwealth had been no different. His reputation had preceded him and he was known for being brutal, efficient and thorough.

It had brought him to the attention of two different but related groups.

The Railroad acquired him first. He did their dirty work, clearing out safehouses for the Switchboard, paving the way for escaping synths with blood as his tar. It was easy work, truth be told, for a merc who wasn’t young anymore. He never knew how they managed to scrape together the caps for his contract, but then again, he never cared as long as he got paid. He went years that way, as a heavy. As a weapon.

And then he got the invitation that changed him forever.

_It's come to my attention that you've been rather disruptive of our operations lately. This must stop._

_I do what people pay me to do. If that's a problem for you, I can see only one way out._

_And what's that, Mr. Kellogg?_

_If I'm working for you, there's no more problem. From what I hear, you can afford me_.

Where would he be without that conversation? Dead, of course. But where would his life have led him before that death?

He watched Xu sleep and thought of all the things they’d done to him. Brain augmentation, neural enhancements, cybernetic nervous system. He’d heard that Gen-3 synths would live forever. He probably would too, as long as he stayed with the Institute to have his parts checked over and serviced regularly. Life was hard on an old body, and his life was harder than most. He’d had the spinal cord replaced twice; he burned through them too fast. And now the pain never stopped. Enhanced nerves were good for combat, terrible for living.

He thought of all the things he’d done for them in exchange for his caps and his upgrades. The Vault extraction. University Point, where he’d killed every man, woman and child to get at a piece of tech that wasn’t even there. Countless, endless ops where his targets had never known he was there until it was too late. And of course, the Switchboard.

He never knew if the Railroad had known he was working for both sides. He’d been with them so long there were agents who’d not even been born when he came to the Commonwealth. Some lived and died their whole lives with him in their background. It certainly hadn’t been the first time he’d worked double contracts, it wasn’t even the first time he’d done contradictory contracts. But it was the last time.

The shock of his betrayal was almost lost in the punch of his brutality. It was mercy, in his head. If he didn’t do it, someone else would. Someone else who didn’t know their weak points, their emotional connection to each other. Someone else might be sloppy. Better to leave them all dead than to let some mindless robot burn them to the ground with dispassionate reserve that might not have gotten the job done. A bullet for every brain, fast, painless, efficient. Merciful.

Of course, he knew then that he hadn’t gotten them all. There were field agents that were not in the base when he’d hit it, there were runners going between dead drops. There were operatives in the safehouses. He knew then that the Railroad was set back but not defeated. But he never said a word to Father. He never volunteered to do a follow up sweep. He wondered now if that had been deliberate on his part. It if had been a passive aggressive way to let them rebuild, let them take on the responsibility of destroying the monster hiding in the closet. Nothing spurs a man to genius like vengeful rage.

Either way, he’d hated every kill, every spent bullet that went into a person who’d looked at him as an asset, an ally. A friend. But caps were caps, right? And no one else could keep his cybernetics going but the Institute.

He hadn't realized how much he'd hated it until he thought about it again.  It was still too near, too recent.  For all he knew, Father suspected he'd left the job unfinished, but events had changed the timeline.  Xu had come out of the Vault.  Dr. Virgil had escaped.  The Railroad had taken a back seat to those more pressing incidents.  And he was compelled to follow orders again.  He’d been ready for his number to be punched when Xu walked into his fort. He’d been ready to be finished, to go out as he’d come in. Fighting.

But she hadn’t killed him. Xu hadn’t just given him a new lease on life. She’d given him a reason, a focus for his rage. He was a killer; and things needed to be killed. That was always going to be true. But now he was done dancing to the Institute’s tune. Time for a new one to be played. He smiled grimly with her in his arms.

They had already paid the piper, and didn’t even know it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea that Kellogg worked for the Railroad but was also responsible for the Switchboard massacre is from that first line the Institute agent says. “You’ve been rather disruptive of our operations lately.” Let’s look at the evidence: Kellogg has been working for the Institute for at least 60 years (since he’s the one who grabbed Shaun from the Vault). The only faction who has ever actively interfered with the Institute is the Railroad. Before the Switchboard massacre, they were a much larger faction, and probably much more powerful (remember Harkness in FO3, who was an early prototype Gen-3 and was in the Capital Wasteland, they needed major resources to handle that). They could probably have found the necessary caps to pay his contract. 
> 
> As for him being responsible for the massacre, it only makes sense. He was the Institute’s top surface operative. I think it’s obvious that he is the one who took down the Switchboard. 
> 
> What do you think, dear readers? Make sense?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xu makes some more plans.

A number of things colliding in her brain brought Xu out of a sound sleep. The memory of Nathan’s dead, empty eyes, the stealth boy based upon Chinese technology, the strong steady thump of Kellogg’s heartbeat. They combined and formed into a simple thought. They would need cloaking to get through the Institute unseen. It seemed obvious once she thought about it, but putting the pieces together had been a puzzle that had been tickling her brain ever since Hancock’s offhand comment about sneaking in the way synths snuck out had dropped from his mouth.

First things first, of course. They needed to know where the escaped synths emerged and that meant going to Bunker Hill. A ‘package’s’ first stop was always Old Man Stockton, even before the Memory Den or the Old North Church. Surely he would know where they came out and where she could get in.

Next, she would have to get her Pip-Boy back. She had never liked using the Vault-Tec computer, but it did have some advantages they might not otherwise be able to access. Like detailed mapping of interior spaces. Kellogg might know his way around the Institute’s Bioscience and Robotics Divisions, but that left an awful lot about the place he _didn_ ’t know. Getting the Pip-Boy meant traveling to Sanctuary Hills, and probably meant dealing with Preston Garvey. She’d turned down his request to become the General of the Minutemen, but she had worked with him long enough to know that he was trustworthy. She’d let him hold onto the meager possessions she’d brought out of the Vault.

Next on her list was how they were going to go about this whole thing. Reconnaissance was going to be necessary. She knew very little about the Institute, and Kellogg knew only parts of it. They needed to know more before they could make a solid plan. She knew it was underground, which meant some kind of power source. Air needed to be recycled, lights needed to be powered and such. Given what she knew of America in general, she was willing to bet it was nuclear in nature. Blowing that up would make a big enough boom that would probably destroy everything in a sizable radius. But bombs were precision work, regardless of the materials she had at hand, and they would need specifics on where and how big the bombs needed to be.

Aside from technical information, she also needed tactical intel. How many people were they likely to be dealing with? How many would be hostile? Was it worth trying to evacuate civilians? Did it matter? She knew it wouldn’t matter to Kellogg. That thought had her smirking. He’d lost touch with his humane side so long ago he no longer felt the sting of its passing. She didn’t hold that against him, it wasn’t like a life led so long in the service of an entity that was so heartless and cold wouldn’t have an effect, after all. She was ruthless, but she was not genocidal. If they could save the innocent, she wanted to try.

And then there was maybe the most important question that kept her awake. What then? What would they do once they had destroyed the Commonwealth’s boogeyman?

Xu was no longer a hearth and home kind of woman. She’d traveled too far, and lived through too much for those words to mean anything now. But she knew whatever her future held, she wanted him to be a part of it.

_Face it, Xu, you love him._

_It’s been three days._

_It doesn’t matter if it’s right._

_That doesn’t mean it’s meant_.

In the low light of the fort – since there were no windows, a good tactical decision although rather inconvenient for living there – she turned in the bed to watch him sleep. He was not a restless sleeper, but he was a light sleeper as she was. She knew if she stood to get up, he would wake. So she stayed and watched him in the gloom of the computer terminal lights glowing from the other room. In rest his profile was still strong, but softer. His face was relaxed and she couldn’t make out his terrible scar in the darkness. She could just see the dark line of his scruffy beard, the line of his eyebrows, the hook of his nose. The darkness blunted the edges of him, encouraged her to touch rather than see. She moved around so she was seated on the bed, her knees pressed against his arm as he lay there on his back.

“You up, wonton?” he said softly, without opening his eyes. She smiled in the darkness, the smile he never saw on her in the light of day.

“Yeah.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Plans.”

“Come here,” he said, drawing up his arm in invitation. She curled up against his side, her head on his arm, her hand resting lightly on his chest. “There’s no rush, you know.”

“I know. But there’s no need to wait either.”

“Huh,” he grunted. “You’re so impatient.”

There was laughter in his tone and it made her want to melt into him. She settled for sliding as close as she could, her head now on his shoulder. He draped his arm over her body, running his hand over her hip and side. It was soothing rather than arousing.

“You’re still thinking awfully loud for this hour of night,” he said after a while.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Talk to me.”

“What are we doing? I don’t mean the Institute, I mean us.”

He sighed, long and hard. “We’re finding comfort in the dark.”

“That’s strangely poetic for a grizzled old merc,” she teased lightly. His chest rumbled as he chuckled in response. “How long do you think we’ll find it?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’d like it to.” It was a quiet admission, and a hard one to make. One that she would not have been able to let escape in daylight. He didn’t reply at first, just pulled her in close, tucking her under his arm. She was pressed up against him from shoulder to knees, skin to skin. It felt…good.

“There are no guarantees in life, wonton. But I think it’s safe to say I’m gonna want to find comfort in you for a good long while. Will that do?”

“Yeah…” She kept her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, willing herself back to sleep without dreams. Eventually she found it. She didn’t know that he did not.

***

She looked over the disassembled parts of the stealth boy she’d found. She was rather impressed, actually, that the Americans had managed to reverse engineer the Chinese stealth technology and make it portable. But it was inefficient and didn’t last nearly long enough. She needed a few parts, but she thought she might be able to rewire it so it would last as long as they needed it to, as well as provide much better coverage.

“Thought you were going to join me,” Kellogg said with humor, wandering in from the shower with a towel loosely draped over his shoulders. “Got it all apart?”

She was momentarily distracted by his naked body, but didn’t allow it to show…much. “Yes, I think with a few modifications I can have this where it should be.”

“Hey, those old military minds didn’t do a half bad job of it.”

“No, they didn’t. They just did a half assed job of manufacturing it. No wonder it only lasts for a minute. It should be self-sustaining until turned off.” She eyed him with a glare at the oversight. “Who needs stealth for just one minute?”

“You snuck in here with no armor and managed to make it to me without one and without being shot full of holes by the synths,” he reminded her.

“It’s not for me, it’s for you.”

“Huh.” He seemed taken aback and stood there, legs braced wide as he scrubbed his body dry. He must have noticed her eyes on him and started to chuckle. “Didn’t get enough already?”

“What?” she snapped her gaze to his face. His grin was wide and salacious.

“Finish your pet project, wonton.”

“I need some parts.”

“What parts?”

“Crystal, fiber optics and some copper.”

“I’m sure you can find those around in here somewhere.”

“Yeah,” she sighed and leaned back in her chair, twisting her shoulders to stretch. She watched Kellogg finish drying himself off. He really was in good shape considering his age, muscles still firm, back unbent. She knew part of it was due to his cybernetics, but she also knew he had led an active life. Still, it was starting to catch up to him. She knew he had pain, she had seen how many stimpaks he kept around.

“What are you thinking of?” he asked as he dressed.

“Your spine.”

“Okay…”

“What are you going to do once the Institute is gone and there’s no one left to fix you up?”

“I’m not sure. Learn to live with it, I guess.”

“Hmm.”

“Worried about me, Xu?”

“Yes.” She got up from the table where the stealth boy was in parts and went over to him. “You’re no good to me if you can’t keep up.”

He grinned. “I can keep up.” Her returning grin was almost shy, and that felt strange. But he seemed to like it that way. He leaned down and kissed her. It was odd kissing him while standing; it reminded her again of how much bigger he was. It was odd just kissing him in general. Neither of them was casually affectionate. Some element of their relationship had shifted from desperate to desiring. It was good, but strange. Unfamiliar.

“No time for that, Conrad. We have places to be.”

“Yeah? Like where?”

“Bunker Hill. I need to see Old Man Stockton.”

“You want to know where he picks up the synths.” Kellogg’s mind worked as fast as hers. She nodded. “All I can tell you is that the Institute lays beneath the CIT ruins. I would imagine any sewer or air filtration pipeline used by escaping synths must be fairly nearby.”

“What kind of security force are we likely to find once we get in?”

“The SRB is in charge of security for synths, but it’s a bit…lax inside. Why would they need it? No one ever tries to break in.”

“We need to keep it that way,” she said.

“That’s a good plan. How are you going to pull it off?”

“The stealth boy for you, and for me…” She sighed and shrugged. “Not quite sure yet. What I wouldn’t give to have my hei gui suit back. Under normal circumstances my plan would be to infiltrate and go through the vents. I don’t know if that will work there.”

“Probably not. Most of the Institute is a wide open column, with each division shooting off like spokes on a wheel. There are hallways and back rooms that are unguarded, but there’s not a lot of places to hide other than those. And it is always incredibly bright.”

“That’s why I need my Pip-Boy. It has mapping capability, and we should be able to plot our course carefully once we get inside. I thought after the trip to Bunker Hill, we’d go to Sanctuary Hills.”

“I’ll meet you there. Showing my face in Bunker Hill is not a good idea.”

“You think it’s under surveillance?”

“I know it is. But not from the Institute.” He cocked his brow at her and waited for her to figure it out.

“The Railroad? Hmm, yes, I could see how that would be a problem. They seem to hold a fairly serious grudge against you,” she said mildly.

“I can’t change the past.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” Her face remained neutral. “All right, let's head to Sanctuary.  We can work out everything else afterwards.”

“Works for me.”

“All right, now I’ll go clean up,” she said, leaving him to shake his head at her retreating figure. He followed her to the shower, leaning against the locker room wall as she stripped off the button down shirt he’d given her as well as her plain black combat pants. She knew he liked seeing her walk around naked, and it was a different feeling than when Nathan had used it as a demoralizing tactic. Funny how different the two men were when on the surface they were the same.

Nathan had been cruel, ruthless and abusive. Kellogg could be those things, but chose not to be with her. She had no illusions about his past actions. And she had no judgement. He was doing the job for which he was paid, nothing more or less. Long before she’d found him she knew of the Switchboard massacre. Deacon had told her all about it when she became an agent and helped him retrieve tech that had been left behind. Few survivors made it out of the old military bunker to form a new headquarters under the Old North Church. They had lost more than personnel that day.

Deacon had never said why they hated Kellogg so much. And it was much more than the feeling they would have had just because their headquarters had been ambushed. She knew there was more to it. She suspected that before his employment by the Institute he had been employed elsewhere. Perhaps by the Railroad. And he had betrayed them.

 _He might still betray you_ , her mind whispered.

 _Ānjìng. He wants this too. He will not betray me_.

She let the water pour over her head, tepid but steady. It was nice to be clean, to feel safe and secure. But she would not let it lull her into a false sense of trust. Kellogg was a mercenary. But he was still human under the façade he’d built for himself. He cared about her, he cared for her. She wondered if there was a way to cement that caring into leverage to ensure his continued help. She thought again about his spine, the pain he was always in. It didn’t seem to make sense that someplace that had perfected both teleportation and synthetic humans could overlook the long term effects on the nervous system.

 _Has to be deliberate_ , she thought. _They’re keeping him on a leash by making him need upgrades and chems only they can give him. Clever. I’ll bet he’s never even thought about why he is always needing work done_.

 _Now how to break that chain_ , she thought. He might be the Railroad’s number one enemy behind the Institute itself, but she knew of at least one person who would be able to help. Dr. Amari. Yes, she was a Railroad sympathizer, and the one who reprogrammed escapes synths, but she was first and foremost a doctor. She’d taken an oath, and she would uphold it. Xu smirked to herself under the spray. Guess Hancock would get to see her again before she went in and blew a hole in the world.

“You done, wonton?” She had no idea how long she’d been standing there letting the water run over her, but it was long enough for it to turn cold.

“Yeah, I’m done,” she said, shutting it off. He wrapped her in a towel, lifting her right off her feet. “What are you doing?”

“Now I’m gonna make you dirty again,” he leered. He carried her into the bedroom and made good on the promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ānjìng - Be quiet; be silent


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xu and Kellogg take another step closer to their goal.

Goodneighbor.

Kellogg had never gotten to know the small pocket of civilization in downtown Boston. It had a reputation as being a haven for criminals and junkies, but it didn’t wield much influence on the Commonwealth itself. At least, it didn’t have much influence over the Institute’s plans. Kellogg knew Father had set up him in Diamond City as bait for whoever came out of the Vault, and that was the reason he’d been there. It could just as easily have been in Goodneighbor, but they’d had a hard time infiltrating Mayor Hancock’s little kingdom.

“Every synth sent here to copy someone has failed. Why?”

“Triggermen don’t wait to ask questions first.”

“But Gen-3’s are supposed to be completely undetectable from humans. And yet, they always seem to find them out here.”

“How does the replacement thing work? They capture a person, and make a copy, but how do they know what to imprint?”

“I’m not sure. Not my department,” he said wryly. “I would imagine it has something to do with interrogation tactics and brain mapping. Basic personality.”

“Maybe that’s the flaw in their thinking. The personalities here are somewhat more complicated than ‘basic’. And any change in behavior is noticed immediately. It’s a tight knit community.”

It was obvious to him that Xu was very comfortable in Goodneighbor, and she’d been greeted by both shopkeepers and members of the Neighborhood Watch upon their arrival. She was far more familiar with this place than she had been with Sanctuary Hills, where the Minuteman Preston Garvey had once more asked her if she’d reconsidered his offer. She had merely collected her things and not answered.

She headed further in towards the Memory Den, pulling him along with her, hand entwined with his. He hadn’t garnered a second look from anyone, although that wasn’t really all that exceptional. Recipients of his handiwork didn’t get to tell anyone what he looked like, and those who contracted him weren’t exactly in a position to brag either. Not to mention, no one outside the Institute had contracted him in over sixty years. The odd outside witness to his work tended to stay silent too. It was rare for anyone to connect his face to his deeds but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a substantial reputation preceding him wherever he went. But it didn’t matter in Goodneighbor, where most people were on the run from something or someone.

The Memory Den was a quiet place, decorated with old world theatrical ambiance and low lighting. The proprietress frowned when they entered together, but didn’t say anything. It was obvious she knew who Xu was, and maybe even guessed at his identity, but motives weren’t generally questioned in a place like this. They found Dr. Amari downstairs in a lab. He knew who she was, of course. If the Institute ever decided the Railroad had grown enough to become a threat again, he was sure her name would end up on a list of people he would be sent to take out. Which would be a shame, really. There were few enough doctors in the Commonwealth as it was, not that the Institute cared about that.

Funny, he felt like he would regret having to kill someone as skilled as Amari. Maybe he wasn’t totally dead inside.

“Doctor, what do you know about neural implants?” Xu asked without preamble.

“I assume you’re asking about implants other than memory components?” the white coated doctor replied in a dry way. “I need you to be more specific.”

“Pain inhibitors, artificial stimulators, spinal connectors. That sort of thing.”

“Why are you asking?”

“My friend here has had extensive replacement of his nervous system, but also suffers from high levels of pain. I think it’s due to controlled deterioration of the hardware, to keep him in a position where further work is always necessary, making him dependent upon their services.”

“By whom?”

This was the tricky part. By all accounts Amari was smart; she wiped and reprogrammed synths after all. She could even change their faces. Once she put two and two together, she might refuse to help.

“The Institute,” Xu said. Dr. Amari stiffened and looked him over with a critical eye. Her face turned stony.

“You’re Kellogg.”

“I am,” he admitted. No sense hiding it.

“I know who you are,” she breathed, her voice barely more than a whisper. She turned on Xu. “Why would you bring him here? What possible reason would I have to consent to work on him?”

“You’re a doctor, Amari. You took an oath to help those in need. We have the caps, you have the expertise. And he has need.”

“Do you know what he’s done? How many lives he’s…?” She took a deep, calming breath. “What purpose is there in this?”

“I am a killer,” Kellogg said, but without heat, without threat. She was angry enough. “But so is Xu, so is every Triggerman in this charming little settlement. So is every raider, and every wastelander who makes it more than a day out there. Do you refuse them too? Or is just because you know who I am, and what I’ve done that personally affects you and your…work?”

“Your actions against your former allies were reprehensible.”

“Employers, Doctor, not allies. The Railroad paid me to do a job. The Institute paid me too, and paid me more. Still does.”

“Mercenary to the core,” she spat with distaste. He wanted to laugh.

The world was black and white to him, with little room for gray. Gray meant emotion, it meant giving a fuck. He generally didn’t. “Yes,” he said with a nod. “You can hate me all you want, it won’t change anything. I was paid to do a job, just as we will pay you to do yours.”

“Give me one reason why I would agree to do this?” Amari rounded on Xu.

“Because we’re going to get inside the Institute and destroy it. And I need him to be in good enough condition to do it.”

The woman was taken aback at Xu’s words. She seemed to be pondering her options. “I suppose such a betrayal of your contract should not be surprising,” she said to him after a minute. “I do wonder why, though. After all this time, why would you be willing to turn on them? You realize of course that this is likely to be suicidal, not to mention it _will_ put an end to your flow of caps.”

“I already have more caps than I could ever spend. And honestly? I’m tired, Doctor. I’m tired of being at their beck and call. The Institute is not going to save the Commonwealth. They serve no purpose here other than their own and propagating fear. And while that doesn’t bother me especially, I find that at this point in my life, I’m no longer willing to be a puppet.”

“So you think that if I can stabilize your neural receptors that will what…cut your strings?” She sneered at them both, but Kellogg thought she might still be considering doing it. The idea that they could destroy the monster under the bed was a heady one. She had probably seen enough of the Institute through the memories of escaped synths to want it to be true.

“In a manner of speaking. I’ve already cut my strings, but I’d like to be able to live out what’s left of my life without physical torment if that means anything to you.”

“In your case, no it does not.” She sighed. “No, I don’t mean that. Human suffering is rampant enough in this world. I will agree to assess your condition. Whether or not I can do anything about it is another matter entirely.”

“What do you need us to do?” Xu asked. Amari sighed again, probably already annoyed with herself for relenting and committing herself to this deed. But commit she had, and once her decision was made she was brisk about it.

“I need you to leave, and I need my patient to get into the memory pod. It has the kind of diagnostic equipment I’ll need to ascertain the extent of his cybernetics and what I can do with them.”

Xu looked like she wanted to argue and it was endearing to see her so worked up on his behalf. He wondered what sort of leverage she was hoping to gain over him with this gesture, and thought maybe he knew. She didn’t fully trust him, and he didn’t really blame her given his past. But he had no intention of double crossing her. He found that when he’d thought about it, he knew he’d rather have _her_ than keep working for the Institute. And that meant taking that place down; there was no way they’d ever let him go willingly.

Love was a funny beast and one he never imagined he’d be beholden to again. But it wasn’t nearly as disturbing to him as he expected it would be. Maybe he was getting soft in his old age.

“I’ll be fine, wonton. Go on, I’ll see you afterwards.” He chucked Xu under her chin and sat in the glass domed pod.

***

“Can you hear me, Mr. Kellogg?”

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Yeah.” He felt like a ton of bricks had taken up residence inside his head, but other than that he felt all right. Sort of numb. A canister of purified water was pressed into his hands and he drank it down.

“Just take it easy. I’ve already given you a stimpak, but it will be some time before all your motor function returns to normal.” Kellogg saw he was still in the Memory Den, still in the pod. Dr. Amari stood over him, her hands in her lab coat pockets, looking grim but satisfied. Memories flashed behind his eyes, things he’d forgotten or deliberately blocked out. “I’m sorry for making you revisit so many…unsettling memories, but I needed to know what the Institute had done to you before I could properly diagnose your condition.”

“It’s all right, Doctor. You have a far more delicate touch than anyone in there, I can assure you.”

“For what it’s worth, thank you, I guess.” Her shoulders slumped. She looked tired, and he wondered how long he’d been under. More than just a few hours, he assumed. “You have received a far greater number of cybernetic parts than she is aware of, haven’t you?” He nodded. “She was right, of course. I found several locations of deliberate mis-wiring and degradation of tissue regeneration. I have fixed what I could, but…”

“Eventually it will all fall apart again anyway, right?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, we weren’t meant to be immortal,” he said.

“Speak for yourself,” a new voice said and Kellogg turned his head to see another figure in the room. Red coat, flag sash, tricorn hat. Ghoul.

“Mayor Hancock, I presume?” Kellogg said.

“In the flesh.” The ghoul grinned, all teeth, but it wasn’t threatening. “Xu asked me to drop by, tell you she had some errands to run but she’d be back.”

“Bunker Hill, you mean?”

A quirk appeared at the corner of the Mayor’s mouth. “Yeah. Said you didn’t want to go anyway, what with your, uh, past history. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t especially pleased you’re here, you have a reputation for trouble, after all. But if you stay peaceful, I ain’t gonna take issue. I did offer, so I got no one to blame but myself.”

“Don’t worry, this was her idea. I don’t plan on doing anything until she gets back.”

“I’ve set you up in the attic of the State House. Better that way, keep you off the radar of the locals.”

“You mean any synths that live here. I don’t care about your people, Hancock. I’m not here to make any trouble for anyone.”

“Good to know, not that I was too worried. Xu’s a pretty good judge of character.” Hancock looked him over, assessing him for something. “She means a lot to me, Kellogg. I want you to know that I’ll always have her back. You cross her, you’ve crossed all of us.”

“Fair enough.” The ghoul nodded and walked away.

“Let’s see if you’re ready to get up and move around, shall we?” Dr. Amari said quietly once Hancock was gone. He was shaky, but there was no pain. She put him through some simple reflex tests and declared he was free to go.  Xu must have already paid her.

He left the Memory Den and went out into the street. It was dark and wet – it had rained at some point – and quiet. Noise wafted up from the Third Rail, but he was in no mood to drink. He ambled over to the State House and went in, finding Triggermen guards at every level. Hancock had said they had use to of the attic, so he went up and made himself comfortable. He didn’t have long to wait. Xu came in nearly behind him.

“You get what you needed?” he asked.

“I did. There’s a sewer system under Greentech Genetics that will lead into the CIT ruins and from there into the Institute. We’re good to go.” She fiddled with the Pip-Boy on her wrist, frowning at its weight and cumbersomeness.

“Recon, then what?”

“Then a plan. We’ll need high explosives, I’m assuming. I should probably go talk to Tinker Tom. I can do that when we get back.” She stopped her fussing with the Pip-Boy and looked up at him with a humorous glint in her eye. “You’ll have to wait here like a good little boy.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I don’t think I’d get a warm welcome from what's left of the Railroad.”

“I’m not judging, but why did you do it?”

“The Switchboard, you mean?” He shrugged. “Caps are caps, right? It was inevitable they’d send someone. They were actually lucky it was me. I didn’t draw it out, I didn’t fumble and end up just maiming instead of killing. I got in, wiped it out, and got out again. I even left them their tech. I knew they weren’t finished. They’d rebuild. I don’t hate them. I just…”

“You had a job to do and you did it.”

“Yes.”

“No hard feelings?”

“Plenty, and on both sides. I don’t really get into the political reasons for my work. They were good people, like a family. But they were the job. And family doesn’t get you anywhere in this world. Not anymore.”

“Depends. Some families are stronger than others.”

“Sure. And some are just stupid enough to kick the wrong dog.” She raised a brow at him.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“Xu, we’re the dogs you don’t want to kick.”

“I guess I can live with that.” She crossed to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “Let’s get some sleep. It’s been a long couple of days.”

“And tomorrow won’t be any shorter,” he agreed.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is always a price to pay in doing business with the enemy.

Getting into the Institute through the tunneling sewers proved to be so easy it was a wonder the whole damned place hadn’t rebelled and escaped this way. Granted, there were the ferals and mirelurks that habitually took up residence in any watery place, but once they were taken care of they met no resistance at all. It was easy to slip past the handful of Gen-1 guards monitoring the upper, older levels of the underground facility. Xu was pleased.

Kellogg was able to trace his way through the winding corridors and empty, abandoned sections with ease. It appeared that passwords and codes had not been reset in all the years he’d worked for them. His clearance was relatively high, for all that he didn’t spend much time inside, and before she knew it, they were in a disused portion of Bioscience.

“Those are super mutants,” Xu said, looking carefully over the two suspended tanks with their dead specimens inside. “What are super mutants doing in here?”

“Before I came along and was modified with cybernetics, the Institute was attempting to build a better soldier using genetic manipulation. What they made was FEV.”

“Shénshèng de gǒu shǐ. So every super mutant in the Commonwealth started out from here? How long ago was this?”

“A hundred years? Maybe more. I’ve only been here for about sixty two, so I don’t know much of what went on here before I arrived.”

Xu perused the lab, reading terminals and listening to holotapes she found scattered around. “Huh, it appears that Virgil, that scientist you were supposed to track down, worked in this lab. I have a feeling I know how he escaped and why he was able to hide in the Glowing Sea.”

“You think he injected himself with FEV? That’s…one way to do it, I guess. Certainly explains why this place looks like it was bombed to shit.”

“Indeed. Perhaps he would have given you more of a run for your caps than you thought.”

“Perhaps.”

She hunted around, looking for anything that might give her some clues and came up with a series of phials, some of which had been used and some that were still full. She stashed them in her pack, a slim contoured shoulder bag she deemed necessary for just this purpose. _Anything useful_ , she thought. Looking at her Pip-Boy, she saw that Bioscience led eventually to the main open center of the Institute. There were branches off that main column, just like Kellogg had said there would be. The trouble was knowing which one was the one they needed.

“Where would power be located?” she asked.

“The reactor core is probably in the lowest level. We need to get through Advanced Systems, I think.”

“Any idea how?”

“Our best bet is going to be to sneak our way through. It won’t be easy. There will be a lot of synths, coursers too. I would imagine the civilian population will not engage, except for maybe the SRB if they suspect we are not here on official business.”

“And if turns hostile?”

“Then we fight them.”

“I’m not interested in a mass murder kind of attack here, Kellogg, I will tell you that now. So how would we get the civilians to evacuate?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, a bit sourly, although he didn’t criticize her choice to save as many as she could. “There must be a failsafe built in, just in case of critical failure of one system or another. Father probably has command of that.”

“In his quarters, I assume.”

“Yes, which is a fair hike on open ground. At least it is from Robotics.”

“Hmm, well, sounds like we’ll need some help then. This is bigger than a two man operation.”

“If we plan a twofold attack, we could probably get up to him in the chaos of evacuation. Believe me, these idiots are so soft they’ll take off running no matter what we do.”

“What are you suggesting? Blow a hole in some essential system and use the cover of the emergency?”

“Yeah, that would work.”

“What do you think would do it?”

“Almost anything. Air filtration, water filtration. Set something on fire.”

They’d worked their way through the back rooms of Bioscience until they reached the central column. Kellogg activated the stealth boy Xu had made him and she stuck to what little shadow there was as they crept across the place. She noted that each Division was color coded and labeled brightly. That made it easier to know where they needed to go. She watched the scientists and listened in on random conversations about the synth projects, the apparently secret fusion reactor progress and even heard how the synths inside were treated.

 _They’re all slaves_ , she thought. _Degraded and misused. Defined not by their individuality but by their conformity_.

In the shade of some potted trees, Xu crouched in the shadows and Kellogg stood nearby, whispering. “Father’s quarters are up there.” His distorted shape pointed vaguely up at the central elevator that spanned the height of the open column. “If we can’t get the evac signal to go off on its own, we’ll need to get up there and hack it.”

“All right,” she whispered back. “I think I’ve seen what I need to. Let’s get back.”

***

The catacombs of the Old North Church had fascinated Xu since she first set foot in them. They were a reminder that Boston had once been part of an even older world than the one she’d known. They twisted and turned, each nook a crypt with old bones lying in rest, each corner a place where feral ghouls might leap out of the darkness illuminated only with glowing fungus and streaky paint. She was ready for them, she always was, but she wasn’t ready for Deacon to step out of the shadows instead, a pistol aimed at her face.

“Whisper,” he said. It was hard to know what went on in Deacon’s head, and not just because of the sunglasses he always wore. He had a past that had changed him, broken him. He was the image of what she could have become if she hadn’t had her rituals and rigorous mental training to keep her sane. “I knew someone would come for us eventually. I never dreamed it would be you.”

“What are you talking about? I just need to see Tom. I have a way into the Institute and I’m gonna blow it to hell.”

The gun never wavered. His face remained the same, emotionless and flat. Only the tilt of his sunglasses gave her any indication that he’d heard her at all. “When you hadn’t checked in, I wondered. I worried. So I went out to find you. No sign, no clue could point me to where you’d gone. Valentine wouldn’t say, and Preston hadn’t seen you in months. There was only one other place you might be, so I went there and I waited.”

He paused and finally dropped the gun from her face. He looked down as if he didn’t want to see her, clenching his free hand at his side. Xu put the pieces together. Somehow Deacon had learned of her association with their greatest traitor. And he was not pleased.

“Oh, Whisper, tell me it isn’t true,” Deacon pleaded in a harsh croak. “Tell me!”

“I will not lie to you, Deacon, although you are not always quite as accommodating. How did you know?”

“I saw you with him. In Goodneighbor.” Deacon threw up his hands and paced back and forth in the brick passageway under the Old North Church. “Fuck, Whisper. Tell me it’s an op, please.”

“It _is_ an op. We’re going to destroy the Institute.”

“What more is it? You don’t let people in, Whisper. It’s not your style. But…you were holding his hand, touching him. Letting him touch you. Tell me it’s all for show.”

“No. I won’t do that.” Even behind the sunglasses Xu could tell Deacon’s expression had turned pained. It was clear in every muscle, every breath. The gun in his hand rattled. “Do you know why I am called Whisper?”

“Because you’re quiet as a mouse.”

“No, because I do not tell.”

“We all have secrets, I get that. Hell, I’m the master of them. But this…this isn’t the same. This sort of secret will ruin people’s lives.”

“I’m not keeping it a secret, Deacon. You say you saw us. Did it look like I was hiding anything?”

“No, and that makes it worse. You looked happy, you looked…fuck…you looked happy,” he repeated. “It’s like I don’t know you at all.”

“You don’t.” She turned to leave – there was no point in staying, he wasn’t going to help her now that he knew, and she didn’t want to fight him – but he snagged her arm.

“Tell me you’ll end it, Xu. Tell me or so help me God I will drag you before Dez and Tom and Carrington and tell them all that you’ve been fucking the enemy behind our backs!” He was shouting at her, and it brought a shiver up her spine she thought long ended.

She gazed on him with cool eyes and carefully pulled her arm free of his grasp. “There are two ways this can go. And because I care about you and the Railroad I will tell them to you. You will either let me go, or you will all die. This is my solemn word, Deacon.”

“If you walk out that door, you are no longer an agent of the Railroad,” he snarled. “You will be barred, you will be unwelcome. You will be an enemy.”

“You say these things as if they have bearing upon my decisions in my personal life. I assure you, they do not. If you do not want my help, I will no longer give it. You will be shorthanded, and soon there will be many lost synths out there, and the Institute will be destroyed.”

“Do you even know? Do you know what he did? What he is responsible for? How can you do this!” Deacon clenched his jaw and stalked away from her as if he couldn’t stand to be near her. When he spoke again his voice was pitched low, angry and hurt. “He massacred the Switchboard. After years of faithful service to the Railroad, he betrayed us to the Institute and he killed everyone he could. His friends, those who had welcomed him. Every. Last. One.”

“Do you know what he is?” Xu asked softly.

“He’s a killer!”

“He’s a mercenary. Those Railroad agents were not his friends. The Railroad was not his home. They were his employers. They paid him caps to be their heavy, just as they pay me caps to do the same. Think about that, Deacon. Think carefully about that. He is mercenary to his core. The Institute paid him more and he made his decision.”

“And for that you will excuse him?”

“No, it does not excuse him. But neither will I revile him for doing what he was paid to do. Would it help if you knew he regretted it?”

“No, because he still did it. I don’t care that he regrets it now, or tells you he does so he can sleep at night. Those people are dead because of him, and you’re standing here like it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t. The bigger picture does. You have always dreamed of taking the Institute down in flames. Does it really matter to you how the job gets done?”

“Yes! How do you know he won’t betray you? Huh? Tell me that. Never trust a merc, Whisper. Never trust a double agent.”

“You people play at espionage with your underground bunker and your pitiful tools. Do you know what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced? Do you know what I’ve done for the service of my home, my country? No, you do not. For two hundred years this land has had its chance to rebuild. And so it has. It is a mewling, creeping, fearful place where the long shadow of the Institute steals people from their beds and replaces them. You have done remarkably little about it. It is an ugly world, full of ugly things and broken remains. It is a kill or be killed world. Casualties are to be expected in a war. You want to pass judgment on him? You want to play the high morality card when you’ve killed in the name of your beliefs? How many innocents have died under your watch, Deacon?”

Deacon sighed. She knew she’d gone too far, brought up things he didn’t like to remember. But it was still the truth. He had been a monster once too. “It’s not the same,” he said stubbornly. “I changed.”

“But you don’t think he can?”

“He can’t be trusted.”

“Neither can you.” She watched him process her words. Trust. The rarest commodity in the Commonwealth. And she had broken his. It didn’t bother her so much as irritate her. She knew he’d be upset when he found out, but she’d hoped for more rational thought. She’d hoped that the ultimate goal would not be overshadowed by sentiment. “I learned more from him in a week than I did the whole time I worked with you. That tells me something.”

“What does that tell you?” he sneered.

“It tells me that you and your small operation have no intention of going through with it, that you’d rather focus on saving a few rather than save everyone. It’s small time and it’s useless. I’ve seen with my own two eyes what they do in there. I understand full well why synths try to escape. But there is a whole fucking world up here being torn apart by the Institute. I intend to put a stop to it, with your help or without it.”

“How long has this been going on?” Deacon asked. At least he was still listening.

“Long enough. I made use of the tools at my disposal and made an informed decision based upon the information I gathered. From him and from you.”

“At what cost?”

“At no cost I was not willing to part with. You know very little about me, about my motives. Perhaps that is my own fault, but what is mine I keep to myself. He’s helped me, Deacon. At great risk to himself.”

“He’s using you.”

“And I him.”

“No. That’s not what it looked like.”

“You of all people know that appearances are deceiving.”

“You are not as great a liar as you think you are.” He cocked his head at her. “There’s more.”

“What would you have me say? I…”

“Don’t say it,” Deacon warned. “Don’t you say it. Do not stand there and tell me that you love him. Him! Kellogg. God, I can’t even stand to say his name. I can’t even stand to think about you and…him…” He made a sound as if he was disgusted, as if he was disappointed. As if that sound would bring her back to them, no harm, no foul.

“He is no more evil than I, Deacon,” Xu said sadly into the silence of the passage.

“Then we are well rid of you,” he spat. He raised the gun again, but it wasn’t steady and she didn’t think he would really shoot her.

“Zàijiàn, Deacon.”

She walked away. Behind her, she heard a thud, as if he had punched the brick wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shénshèng de gǒu shǐ -Holy shit  
> Zàijiàn -Goodbye


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love in the time of radiation.

Kellogg was at the Third Rail, enjoying a quiet drink. He felt the watchful eyes of everyone, but didn’t let it bother him. That synth singer was on the stage, and Kellogg had to admit she could really belt out a song. There had been an undertone of anxiety when he first arrived, but when it became evident that he was just going to sit at the bar, everyone relaxed. He would have smiled about it to himself, but he didn’t. He’d earned that instant anxiety. He wasn’t going to deny it. So he stayed to himself, waiting for Xu. He wasn’t wholly surprised when the Mayor came in first.

“Kellogg,” Hancock acknowledged with a nod.

“Mayor Hancock.” They clinked their glasses together and the ghoul slid onto a barstool next to him.

“Xu back yet?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“So, can I ask you what you plan to do once you save the Commonwealth from the boogeyman?”

“I have no idea,” Kellogg replied honestly. “Take a long vacation maybe.”

“Tough job being a full time killer.”

“Yeah…” They drank in silence for a while. He was starting to see why Xu liked Hancock so much. He was not one to judge, and was fairly liberal in his ideals for his town, while remaining firmly vigilant in protecting it. He was easy going and affable, which sort of amused Kellogg when he thought about how unsociable Xu could be. “Can I ask how you and Xu met?”

“She showed up on a mission for the Railroad. I don’t got a lot rules here, so people make up their own, or think they do. There was a guy who tried to get caps from her, extortion style. I was just about to step in and give him a lesson in manners when she whipped out a blade and cut his throat. It was so fast I barely even saw it. She never even batted an eye.” Hancock smiled at the memory. “Match made in heaven.”

“She calls you a friend.”

Hancock turned to him, turned those black eyes on him with a half grin on his ruined lips. “Yeah. She says the same thing about you. What a pair we are, eh?” He knocked back his drink and signaled Charlie for another one. “Ya ever think about how we’re the only ones?”

“I do, in fact. I’ve lived a long time, been across this whole fucked up land. Met a lot of people, killed a lot of them too. She is one of a kind.”

“Makes ya feel special, don’t it? Knowin’ she chosen to bestow her considerable gifts on you?”

“One way or the other.”

“You said it.” They lapsed into silence again, this time broken when Xu glided between them, a container filled with what looked like different types of grenades and some alarm clocks in her hands. “What’s this, sister?” Hancock asked.

“The makings for bombs.”

“Not in my bar, all right?”

“Don’t worry so much, Hancock. I’m not going to blow up your bar. Charlie wouldn’t forgive me.”

“Tha’s right, missy,” the Mr. Handy interjected. Hancock laughed, ruffled her hair, ignored her sour, long suffering expression and wandered away.

“I thought you were going to the Railroad to get explosives,” Kellogg said quietly.

“Deacon had other ideas. Especially concerning my association with you.” She shrugged eloquently and went back to organizing her grenades, looking them over. “I’m thinking frag to crack whatever housing the reactor is in and pulse to overload it. What do you think?”

“And the clock is to put it on a timer?”

“Yes.” She started putting the separate pieces together into groups. “Think three will do it?”

“If we can manage to set off three without getting into a firefight or having one go off early, sure.”

“Well, one of them is actually for the diversion. Figured we could set that one in the air filter.”

“The timing is going to be critical. I’m not interested in sacrificing myself here. I would like to be able to walk away with the other evacuees.”

“Of course. That’s the point of the timers. How many relays are there? For a place that big, I’m hoping it’s more than just one or two.”

“There’s one on every residential level, plus the main Courser relay which can teleport up to six at a time. I think there’s emergency relays in the reactor room too, but I’ve never been down there to see personally.”

“Good. That means we don’t have to go all the way back up to relay out.”

“Got it all planned out, have you?” She turned to him, her impish face serious.

“I have.”

“Good. How about we get out of here, then, and make use of a little downtime?” The serious expression melted away into something softer, something endearing and just for him. The long coiled heat in his gut unfurled and he grinned at her. _Damn_ , he thought. _Just…damn_.

“What did you have in mind, Conrad?” she asked slyly.

“Why don’t I show you?”

***

Their room in the attic of the State House wasn’t much, just a storage space filled with discarded junk and furniture with a mattress on the floor. But it had a door, which gave them privacy, and it had a window, which gave them light. He steered her up the spiral stairs without any hurry, the Triggermen guards watching their every move. He took the box of grenades from her and placed in a desk to the side.

“Before you can get to your plans,” she said with a short laugh, “I want to stretch. I’ve been lax about it.”

“All right.”

Without further commentary she stripped down and began a series of motions that stretched her body taut before she bent in half. She made a triangle of her legs and leaned forward from her waist, arms outstretched. She moved into more intricate and difficult postures, each one flowing like water from one to the next. He settled himself against the desk and watched. He didn’t know how long she exercised, but he didn’t care. There was something measured and soothing about watching her. The last time he’d seen her do this they hadn’t known each other at all, and now he could distinguish how each muscle group would feel under his hands. He could see now the difference between her natural arm and the prosthetic one. Both were strong, but the artificial limb was stronger; she could balance her entire body weight on it. A fine layer of sweat beaded up on her skin as she worked and stretched, but she never lost the pace of her breathing, never looked like she was making an effort.

“So what do you have planned?” she asked when she was done.

“Nothing special,” he replied, taking off his jacket and laying it over a chair he’d tipped back on its feet. “I just want _you_.”

He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it over the jacket. Before he could turn back to Xu he felt her fingers along his spine, tracing the long scar where his implants were put in. “How are you feeling? I never asked.”

“Not bad. The pain is mostly gone.” He kept silent about Amari’s assessment of how long it would last.

“You’re a hundred and nine, Mr. Kellogg,” she’d said. “The human body simply wasn’t meant to live that long. You are already on borrowed time. I can’t give you a definite answer on how long this will last.”

He’d smiled, a little sadly, but also a little pragmatically. “It’s fine, Doctor. Just being out of pain for the rest of them will be good enough for me.”

He focused again on Xu’s fingers, the way they spread over his back, following the marks and scars like a roadmap of his life. She put her arms around him from behind and laid her cheek against his back, her hands and on his chest. He covered them with his own and just breathed. Just stayed in the moment.

The old State House creaked and groaned around them, with a susurrus of whispers from below, from the drifters who were always there, to Hancock and his bodyguard Fahrenheit talking, to the faint outside noises on the street. There was something singular about being still in such a place, and knowing what he had.

_The thing about happiness is that you only know you had it when it's gone. I mean, you may think to yourself that you're happy. It's only looking back, by comparison with what comes after, that you really understand that's what happiness felt like._

_Oh, Sarah…I never thought I’d feel this way again. I never thought I’d be this happy again._

_I’m old enough to know what I have, but I’m wise enough to know I could still lose it._

_I will try not to this time_.

He turned in Xu’s arms, tucking his own around her. She tilted up her head and he leaned down to kiss her. He could tell she wanted more, but he wanted to take it slow. Her hands clung to him as he deepened the kiss, as his tongue slid between her lips to meet hers. She made a sound – she didn’t try to hide them from him anymore – and it went straight through him. He pulled her arms up over his shoulders, never releasing her from the kiss, and felt her warm, slick skin. He paused for a moment to run his fingers around her body, his big hands nearly spanning her waist entirely. She pulled away, breathless and smiling. All her exertions with her yoga didn’t steal her breath, but he did. It was a heady feeling.

“Why so slow, Conrad?”

“I just want to enjoy it. We always rush.”

She raised a brow at him, mockingly. “Whose fault is that?”

He cocked half a grin at her and tapped the end of her nose. “Yours, wonton. This time you’re just gonna lie there and take it.”

He walked her backwards to the mattress and lowered them both to it. He pulled off his clothes piece by piece, stealing kisses and touches in between. He lay full upon her, his weight pressing her down. She hummed in the back of her throat, a sound of pleasure and contentment.

“I never thought I’d feel this way,” she confessed in a whisper, her eyes meeting his bravely.

“Neither did I,” he replied. He stroked his hand down her body until he reached her leg and pulled it up against his hip, spreading her open. He touched and teased her center until she was wet and warm on his fingers, until she was nearly over the edge. Only then did he slide into her warmth, hissing at the feel of her squeezing around him.

“Harder, Conrad,” she pleaded.

“Not yet,” he said with a smile. “I want you to be so wrung out that you can’t move. I want you to call my name when you come, breathless and airy like a girl. I want to erase the past for you, Xu.”

“You already have.” She trailed a finger down the scar on his cheek, her own special affectionate touch.

He leaned down and kissed her hard, plundering her mouth as he stroked in and out of her body. He was gentle and slow, feeling it build, feeling it grow until they were both consumed by it. Later he would fuck her hard, later he would back her up against the wall, or throw her over the desk, or even have her ride him while he sat in the chair. But for now, he made love to her.

“Ahh, nǐ juédé wǒ nèixīn hěn hǎo…” She moaned, lapsing into unintelligible Chinese as she got closer and closer to her climax. She moved under him meeting each thrust with her own, her legs tight around his hips, her arms clutching his back. Her breathing grew more urgent, more uneven. He chuckled and it rumbled through him into her, tipping her over the edge to a shuddering orgasm. “Conrad…” she cried out. “Don’t stop, don’t ever stop!”

He drew up her legs then, forcing her to be spread wide and watched himself move in and out of her body. She glistened with sweat in the slanting light coming through the high window, her body still arched and heaving from the force of her release. He sat back on his knees, pulling her up so he was straddling his thighs and she clung to him, her body taking all he had to give her.

“Oh, wonton, I could do this forever,” he whispered in her ear. She slammed her hips against his, clenching and squeezing his cock until he groaned and filled her until it spilled out and ran down his legs.

“It’s never enough,” she said when she had her breath back. They were still entwined, kneeling and straddling. She raised her head to look at him and her eyes glistened remarkably with tears. “Why is it never enough?”

He aimed a grin at her. “Because we’re both greedy.”

“A good thing too. I’m not finished with you yet.”

“I’m counting on it, wonton.” He pulled out of her with a wet gush of mingled come and rested his forehead against hers. “I’m counting on it.”

 _Later_ , he thought. _I’ll have plenty of time to tell her how I feel later_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nǐ juédé wǒ nèixīn hěn hǎo - you feel so good inside me


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Burn, baby, burn.

The path was still clear into the sewer system and they were able to sneak in without setting off any alarms or meeting anyone they couldn’t avoid. Kellogg carried the three bombs in a pack, hidden behind the distorting field of the stealth boy. Xu hugged the shadows at his side, moving from terminal bank to terminal bank in Bioscience until they reached the corridor they were looking for.

“Environmental controls will be monitored,” Kellogg told her as they moved through abandoned rooms and empty hallways. “It’s the one place that’s under constant surveillance due to the problems they’ve been having.”

“How many do you think will be there?”

“I have no idea.”

Xu slid her combat knife from its sheath at her hip and smiled grimly. “I’m ready.”

“Let’s go.”

They had timed their attack to coincide with the night time shift, so there were only two synths on duty as well as a single human scientist. Xu took down the scientist quickly and efficiently, without alerting the synth guards. Kellogg watched her then pull the guards down and dismember them just as quickly, and quietly. There was a smell of blood and circuitry in the air as they passed through the irising door to the main air filtration controls.

Their plan was to shut them down with a catastrophic explosion, which would hopefully set off enough alarms that people would start to evacuate to the surface. If that didn’t work, they would have to sneak into Father’s quarters and trip the evacuation notice manually through his personal terminal. “All right, I need the smaller charge,” Xu said, holding out her hand. Kellogg handed it over. She set the alarm for five minutes and placed the grenade attached by a slim wire directly on the terminal closest to the power supply.

“Hopefully the pulse will be enough to knock out the power to the console and the whole thing will shut down.” They left as quickly as they could, knowing they only had five minutes to get far enough away from Bioscience to escape the blast and be close enough to the stairwell that led to Father’s quarters if they needed to get inside. There were few people out and about. There were mostly synths, who ignored them, dutifully keeping to their jobs. Xu saw someone in a medical suit coming down the stairs from the director’s rooms and she hoped her cover was good enough. Kellogg stood still enough that the distortion from the stealth boy didn’t waver. The doctor walked right past them without looking. But he seemed agitated.

There was a vent next to their hiding spot and Xu could feel a slight breeze as it blew fresh air into the residential corridor. When the pulse grenade went off, she should feel it stop. They were too far away to hear the grenade, but they knew it had worked when the lights flickered from the bright white to a more muted yellow, signifying a possible emergency. Synth guards began pouring out of the Robotics Division and headed towards Bioscience, while from above, the disgruntled voices of scientists woken by alarms in their quarters began to be heard. Behind her hand, the gentle breeze of fresh air slowed, then stopped. They waited.

The evacuation sequence never started.

“Plan B,” Kellogg murmured. She squeezed his hand in agreement. Most of the people who’d come down from the apartments above had gone straight to Bioscience, but Kellogg didn’t say anything about Father, so he must not have been among them. They went up the stairs as quickly as they could, luckily running into no one. Kellogg led the way confidently to the Director’s apartment and used a code to let himself in. The sight that met their eyes was not what they expected.

The old man was handsome and bearded and aged, but Xu clearly saw the resemblance to Nathan in him. He was tucked into some sort of medical bay, his lower body completely concealed while his upper half rested on a padded mattress, holding him slightly upright.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice pained and breathy. A shiver went down her spine as those eyes met hers.

“You have your father’s eyes,” she said. “Are you ill?”

“I’m dying,” the man known as Father said. He frowned. “I’ve been waiting for you, but you never came. I waited for word that you had killed Kellogg, but it never came. How did you come to be here?”

“Conrad?” Xu invited, and she heard the slight hiss of the stealth boy as it deactivated. Father’s eyes widened with shock, and his face went rigid with it.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Xu turned to Kellogg, allowing him a chance to speak first. He merely looked back at her and shook his head. He had nothing to say to his employer.

“We are here to stop you, Shaun,” Xu said.

“So, you have betrayed me, as you betrayed those before. It is fitting, I suppose.” He directed his words to Kellogg, but he didn’t sound angry, or even that surprised. Only curious. “Why would you destroy all that I’ve worked to build? What purpose does it serve?”

“The Institute is a cancer on the Commonwealth, Shaun,” Xu said. “All this discovery and technology could have been used to make life better for all, but instead you chose to hoard it, to hide it.” She shook her head sadly. “You plan to make the world an experimental testing ground. And so you must be stopped. The world is not your playground. Not anymore.”

“Humanity is finished,” Father said strongly, showing the first sign of anger. “I have known it since I first came to understand just how ruined the surface had become. My synths, my children, they are the future.”

“You Americans. You always think you know what is right for the rest of the world. Do you know who I am?” Xu asked.

“I know that you are not my mother.”

“No, I am not. She left, three weeks before the bombs dropped. I am Tien Xu. I was a prisoner of war, transferred from Alaska to San Francisco, and from there to Boston. By your father. He tortured me, he raped me. He wanted to break me. This man standing here, that you turned into a monster, into a murderer…he saved me.” She chuckled darkly. “The ultimate irony is that this was all for nothing. You will die here, and your sick dream of replacing humanity with your genetically manipulated slaves will die too. And by the same man who made it all possible by taking you from the Vault.”

“Conrad, look at me,” Father said, turning his head away from Xu. “I have known you my whole life. I looked up to you as a child, as the one reminder of where I came from. I know you felt affection for me then. How long has it been gone?”

“It isn’t, Shaun,” Kellogg finally said, breaking his silence. “You are the closest thing to family I have. But you’re right, it is fitting. I have no love for the Commonwealth. I don’t care about your synths or your plans. But I have to choose. You or her. She gives me something you never have. A desire to keep living.” He shrugged. “The choice was easy.”

“I see,” Father said, and he looked tired suddenly. He even rested his head against the foam pillow and closed his eyes. He was gray with pain, Xu saw, gray and blue and white. His death would not have been easy on him if they didn’t intervene. He was wasting away slowly.

“Let me save the innocents here, Shaun,” Xu said quietly. She had moved to stand next to his medical crèche, close enough that she could see the webwork of veins under his skin. “I intend to stop you, but I am not interested in drowning in the blood of your people.”

He sighed, defeated. “There, in the desk, there is a password. It will unlock my personal terminal and you can sound the evacuation notice. You have won. Now leave me in peace, stranger. Take this traitor with you.”

Xu bowed to him with her hand over her fist, a respectful reverence for a passing elder. She took the password and logged onto the computer and found that she could also shut down many of the synths that would likely try to stop them as well as sound the evac notice. When she was done, she nodded to Kellogg, who was drawing up the covers around Father, tucking him in one last time.

“Let’s go,” she said. He nodded and followed.

***

The reactor core was shielded behind layers of protective metal casing, and accessible only from a terminal nearby. There was a high amount of radiation that would pour off into the reactor room once she opened it, but there was nothing she could do about that. She had Rad-X with her, she always did. Another necessity of living in the Commonwealth.

Panic had taken over as the evacuation notice began, people running for the transporters, synths rushing around wondering if they should follow.  Most of them did. There were many of the early robotic types that stood, heads hanging, completely immobile, that Xu realized she had shut down herself. It had increased their odds of reaching the reactor greatly, but that wasn’t to say there hadn’t been fighting. Coursers and sophisticated Gen-3’s had appeared seemingly from nowhere to engage them and the fighting had been fierce and challenging.

The laser shots burned where they’d hit her, and the artificial skin of her prosthetic hand had burned away, revealing the metallic ‘bones’. The circuits and actuators still functioned, however, and she pushed on with Kellogg, ever deeper into the core of the Institute.

“How much time should we give them?” Xu asked as she hacked the terminal whose controls would open the shielding of the reactor.

“I would say all those planning to leave have already done it,” Kellogg replied. “Give us enough time to get out and blow this place to hell.”

The Advanced Systems wing was littered with dead synths but still he kept an eye out, watching for any surprises. It was a good thing too. Just as she opened the reactor core, a battery of laser shots peppered the floor around her, singeing her boots and putting little burn marks into the floor panels. It had been carefully aimed, she noted, not to hit the open reactor. She swung around to face their new attacker and saw another Courser bearing down on them. He was tall and dark with sunglasses on his dispassionate face.

“Kellogg,” the Courser sneered.

“X6-88,” Kellogg returned. “I had hoped you left already.”

“My place is here. You must stop. There is still time to stop.” The Courser seemed to be pleading with them, although his voice never wavered, never changed inflection.

“The time to stop all this was long ago, X6, but you wouldn’t understand that, would you?”

“What do you hope to gain here?” Xu took advantage of the distraction Kellogg had created and placed her homemade charges on the reactor core, setting the clocks to go off in ten minutes. There was no way to attach them to the casing itself, so she was forced to place them on the floor inside the shielding. She hoped it would still be enough to set off a catastrophic explosion within the reactor. The resulting explosion would be seen for miles around if all went well. She hoped that wherever the escapees teleported to, it was far enough away from the blast.

“You have lived here your whole life,” Kellogg was saying to the Courser. “You don’t know what it’s like to struggle for food or shelter or safety.”

“No, I do not. That does not mean I feel like I am missing a critical part of my being. Nor do I wish to be forced to accept that kind of life.”

“This place could have helped rebuild the Commonwealth into a better place for all of mankind, and instead it chose to keep its technology hidden and spent only on its own creations.” Kellogg sounded rueful. “I never cared about that before now.”

“And what has changed your attitude?”

Kellogg chuckled, raw and almost bitter, as if what he’d learned had been learned too late. “Love, X6.”

“I have always deemed that to be a wasted and unnecessary emotion.” The Courser sounded sour.

“You wouldn’t know, would you?” Kellogg said. “This is the end of the line, X6. You can either go down now, or escape to the surface and take your chances.”

X6-88 leveled his weapon at Kellogg, but then seemed to change his mind and it swung towards Xu, just finishing up inside the reactor core. “I cannot let you do this.”

“It’s already done,” Xu said. “If you shoot me now, you will have accomplished nothing more than vengeful violence. If you shoot my bombs, you will only have accelerated the timing of the explosion. Let us go, Courser. Save yourself.”

“Self-preservation is a human instinct. I have been programmed to know this. But there is only one working transporter down here, and there are three of us.”

“Then we should stop fighting about this and get moving.” Xu moved to stand next to Kellogg, and the urgency to run was strong. They were wasting time. She had no intention of being in the blast radius when the timers went off.

“What will you do, Kellogg, without the presence of the Institute to keep you in check?”

“I will live my life the way I see fit. With this woman.”

X6-88 nodded as if he understood, but his face remained impassive. “No longer a mercenary killer?”

“No, no longer.”

“Then you are no longer a threat.” X6-88 lowered his rifle and turned away. Kellogg and Xu followed him through the twisting catwalks of Advanced Systems where the relay waited for them, powered up and sparking. It had taken a hit during some of the fighting, but it still worked. X6-88 had already relayed out.

“Damn, this was hit pretty hard. I’m not sure where we’ll end up,” Kellogg said as he looked it over. “The controls are working, but the directional field can’t be programmed anymore.”

“So we could theoretically end up at opposite ends of the Commonwealth, is that what you’re saying?”

“Probably,” he stressed. Not theoretically. “It could even throw us entirely out of the Commonwealth. The range of these things is pretty far. Get in, I’ll relay you first.”

“How will you get out?”

“I’ll have a few seconds once you’re gone to reset it and power it up. If I’m fast, I’ll make it.”

“No, too many variables. No…Conrad…”

He stroked the side of her face. “People like us don’t get happily ever after, wonton. And I’m already on borrowed time. Amari told me so. I’d rather know that you are safe, than risk that you are not. You gave me back my soul, Tien Xu. Never doubt that I love you for it.”

“Conrad…”

“Get in the relay, Xu.”

She clung to him, like she would never let go. He tipped up her head and kissed her once, then pushed her bodily into the teleporter. She wanted to run to him, but once it started to cycle, she couldn’t move or she would dematerialize the wrong way. That wouldn’t bode well for her chances of survival. She fought against the urge, but it was hard.

The last thing she saw before the brilliant blue flash took her away was his face.

***

The explosion was huge, deafening, blinding. She’d landed on the roof of some ruined skyscraper. The gust of wind from the explosion blew her back on her feet and she stood there watching it mushroom into the sky. There was no sign of Kellogg.


	12. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope is a painful thing...

People like us don’t get happily ever after, he’d said. _Mercenaries should never grow old. Spies should never slow down_. You gave me back my soul, I love you, he’d said.

She sat in the courtyard in front of the State House, her face in the sun. Hancock approached and stood beside her, leaning against the wall like he usually did, watching her.

“How’s my favorite girl?” he asked gently, wary of her unpredictable moods. Sometimes she raged, threw things, battered her artificial hand until the walls cracked. Sometimes she was calm, quiet and thoughtful. Kellogg still hadn’t been found, no trace, no body. It was getting harder to hold out hope in the months that had passed without any word.

“The sun is nice today,” Xu said.

Hancock barked a short laugh. “It is.”

“It’s a new world, isn’t it? I mean, aside from the one I woke up in, the one I hated. This world…” She cradled something in her lap, rolled her fingertips over it, both real and metal. Dr. Amari had patched her up, but the patch was glaringly different on the back of her artificial hand. It didn’t matter. She was still whole. “This world is gonna be just fine, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, thanks to you.”

Once she’d made her way out of the ruined building she’d found she was in downtown, and not far from Goodneighbor. After she’d recovered from her various dings and bruises, she’d gone back to Sanctuary Hills and finally told Preston Garvey that she was ready. She needed something to keep her busy. Each new settlement she’d made, each piece she’d carved out of the wasted ruins to form a new safe place, was an attempt to find him, to get word from anyone that he’d been seen, that someone knew something.

She’d even gone so far as to trek out to the Glowing Sea to find Virgil, to see if Kellogg had made good on his final mission. He hadn’t, but she felt she’d done a good deed, since one of the phials she’d lifted from the Institute that day they reconned there was an antidote to the FEV the scientist had injected in himself. He wasn’t too happy that they’d blown up the Institute, but he was happy to be alive. It made her feel strangely good to do something so altruistic for someone she'd never met before. The journey may have been fruitless as far as Kellogg was concerned, but it was satisfying nonetheless. And she wouldn’t give up looking for her merc. She refused to give up.

“He’s out there, Hancock. He has to be.”

“Xu…”

“He has to be.”

“If you say so.” Hancock bent down over to her, slid his hand over hers. “When will I feel it kick?” he asked, curiosity mixed with wonder.

“I don't know.  A while, probably,” she said with a smile. She rubbed her belly, distended and firm. Hers. His. _Ours_. “I can feel it though. Like butterflies and ripples. Like…magic.”

“Huh, sounds like bad gas to me,” Hancock grunted, but his eyes were merry. Kellogg had been many things Hancock was not. And he knew he was no angel. He would try to do his best to raise Kellogg’s child to be better than them both if the old merc never showed his face.

“You’re such an idiot, Hancock,” Xu said, tipping her head back to meet his gaze. She had a sad smile on her face and tears forming tracks down her cheeks. Xu had never cried in front of him before, not since the night she’d returned to Goodneighbor, alone. Lost.

“But you like me anyway,” he whispered, stroking the tears away.

“I do. You’re my second favorite person.” Xu soothed her growing baby and enjoyed the sun.

The gate of Goodneighbor opened and she smiled. That smile rivaled the sun.

“Well…” Kellogg said, seeing her sitting there, like she waiting, like she’d never stop waiting.  He was worn and there were some new scars, but he was there.  He was really there.  “This is unexpected.”

 

~Fin~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A great big thank you to everyone who enjoyed this little offshoot of my imagination. Y'all are great!
> 
>  
> 
> Samhain blessings (or happy Hallowe'en) to all and sundry!!
> 
> *There is not really any new content here, I have just edited and updated the tags (now that I know what I'm doing).*

**Author's Note:**

> What if you wished you didn't have to kill Kellogg? Where would your imagination go? 
> 
> Mine went here, apparently.
> 
>  
> 
> Many thanks to JayceCarter for inspiring the spark, then encouraging me to share it. Hope you like it.


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